World, Underworld, Overworld, Dreamworld

By Mike Hockney

Ancient cultures were faced with two immense problems. Why is there something rather than nothing and why is the universe ordered rather than chaotic? To answer these questions, they invented cosmologies, which were also the basis of their religious beliefs. A person’s cosmological and religious beliefs are always interdependent.

The ordered universe of the ancients was divided into four: 1) the World (that we inhabit), 2) the Overworld (the sky and heavens that the gods inhabit), 3) the Underworld (that the dead inhabit), and 4) Dreamworld (the mysterious zone between sleep and death that connects the living, dead and the gods). This is the incredible story of these four worlds and how they have influenced the development of all human thought, right up to the present day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781326016579

Mike Hockney

Mike Hockney invites you to play the God Game. Are you ready to transform yourself? Are you ready to be one of the Special Ones, the Illuminated Ones? Are you ready to play the Ultimate Game? Only the strongest, the smartest, the boldest, can play. This is not a drill. This is your life. Stop being what you have been. Become what you were meant to be. See the Light. Join the Hyperboreans. Become a HyperHuman, an UltraHuman. Only the highest, only the noblest, only the most courageous are called. A new dawn is coming... the birth of Hyperreason. It's time for HyperHumanity to enter HyperReality.

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Quotations

Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world. – Bronislaw Malinowski

Nights through dreams tell the myths forgotten by the day. – Jung

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. – Joseph Campbell

Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks. – Alistair Cooke

There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call ‘atheists,’ and those who think they are facts are ‘religious.’ Which group really gets the message? – Joseph Campbell

Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people’s religion. And religion may, in a sense, be understood as popular misunderstanding of mythology. – Joseph Campbell

Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history. – Vernor Vinge

Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. – Christopher Nolan

I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell’s notion that a culture or society without mythology would die, and we’re close to that. – Robert Redford

Table of Contents

World, Underworld, Overworld, Dreamworld

Quotations

Table of Contents

The Cosmological Origin of Religion

The Homeric World

The Five Rivers of Hell

The Return of the Dead

Abrahamism: The Flat Earth Society

The Hyperboreans

Beyond the Dead: The Edge of the Universe

Winged Dreams

Dreamcatchers

Dream Architecture

The Golden Race

The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection

Tombworld

Unburied Souls

The Cimmerians: The People of the Dark

The Evolution of Dreams and Dreaming

The Dark Realm

The Silent Abode of Hypnos

Haunting

The Greatest Boundary of All: Death

The Palace of the Dead

The Blessed Race

The Koranic Flat Earth

The Son of God?

Creation By Divine Battle

The Wizard of Oz

Near Death Experiences (NDE)

Brave New World

The Orgastic Future

Heaven, Hell and Purgatory

Jack the Ripper

The Waters of Oblivion

The Inner Sanctum

Mammon’s Prophet

Empathy and Sympathy

Libido and Eros

Demons

Dreams Are But Shadows

Ghost Stories

The Stars of the Dead

The Double Mind of Man

The War in Heaven

The Gorgon Shield

The Gnostic Christ

Pythagoras

The Music of the Heavens

Winners and Losers

The Heavenly Race of Gods

Sleepwalking

Reincarnation or Resurrection?

The Golden Pharaohs

A Modern Myth

The Birth of Time

The Geocentric versus the Heliocentric

Here Be Dragons

The Labyrinth of Language

Daniel in the Lions’ Den

The Big Question

Conclusion

The Cosmological Origin of Religion

All religious beliefs about the world begin with cosmology. The earliest civilisations had mythological cosmologies involving various cosmic gods that were anthropomorphisms of natural forces, so, for example, the sun is a god, the sky is a god, earth is a god, the ocean is a god, winds are gods, the planets are gods, and so on.

Abrahamism opted for one all-powerful anthropomorphic Creator. The ancient Greek philosophers looked to a divine, rational force that they did not anthropomorphise, thus allowing philosophy, and eventually natural science, to develop separately from religion. Modern science got rid of all the anthropomorphic gods and even the rational mental force (Logos; Nous; Arche; Apeiron) of the ancient Greek philosophers, leaving nothing but mindless, lifeless, purposeless atoms of matter, underpinned by a bizarre, unreal, unobservable probability and possibility wavefunction. The inevitable logical outcome of scientific materialist cosmology is atheism since there’s no place for any gods, and not even any place for freestanding mind. Those scientists that continue to be believers dishonestly and irrationally construct an unknowable domain of faith separate from that of their knowable science.

This book is about the evolution of religion, philosophy and science through humanity’s various cosmological theories, especially those concerning the World (Earth), Overworld (sky and heavens), Underworld (including hell) and the World of Dreams (of transcendent states and of mentally moving between the different levels of existence).

What you believe about the nature of reality is directly conditioned by how you understand cosmology. People can comprehend cosmology in terms of four basic attitudes: theism, deism, pantheism and atheism. With theism, a single God (monotheism) or many gods (polytheism) create, design and supervise the world and take a personal interest in humanity. This is the view of Abrahamism and the old pagan religions. With deism, a single God or many gods are not interested in humans at all and act more in the manner of natural laws and scientific forces. This was the standard view of the Enlightenment. With pantheism, God and Nature are effectively the same thing: we are all part of God/Nature. This is the core view of Eastern religion. With atheism, the universe is meaningless, pointless, purposeless and is nothing but a machine process. This is the standard scientific materialist view.

Agnostics are those who do not commit themselves to any of the above views, hence they have no clear cosmology. (In practice, the vast majority of agnostics accept the atheist cosmology of scientific materialism but refuse to rule out something more. This makes no sense since, if there’s something more, scientific materialism is refuted.)

Is the world rational or irrational? Is it conscious (mental and self-aware in its basic mode), unconscious (mental but without self-awareness in its basic mode, but with the logical capacity to evolve consciousness) or non-conscious (not mental at all in its basic mode)? Is it mental or material? Did it come from nothing at all or an eternal something? Is it purposeful or purposeless? Why is it ordered rather than chaotic? Why are we here? How did we get here? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Are we created or uncreated? Is death the end or just a new beginning? These are all the fundamental issues that have to be addressed.

This is the story of how humanity has tackled these questions. And they all revolve around cosmology.

The Two Species

"It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination (name) for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats – and they in turn can listen to ours." – Henning Mankell

We live in a world of narrative. Politics, economics, Hollywood, TV, video games, religion, advertising ... it’s all about narrative.

For all members of the Mythos species, cosmology is explained in terms of a simplistic, emotional narrative about the gods or God: entities with which people can have a narrative and emotional connection and understanding.

All members of the Logos species find cosmologies based on emotional narrative absurd. The Logos species comes to cosmology from a perspective of science, mathematics and rational philosophy.

If reality is a mathematical, scientific or metaphysical system, there’s no point at all in addressing it in terms of Jews wandering in the desert, or an illiterate Arab going into a cave and speaking to an angel, or a guy born in a stable under a wandering star feeding the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish.

The Abrahamic holy texts have precisely zero truth content. You might as well worship fairytale princes and princesses, or frogs in need of a kiss.

You cannot approach Logos from Mythos, or vice versa. They are wholly different takes on reality. One is rational (reflecting the Jungian thinking function) and the other emotional (reflecting the Jungian feeling function). Feelings cannot reveal ultimate rational truth. Rationalism cannot deliver emotional ecstasy. These are the blunt facts.

If you’re a strongly feeling type, it will be impossible for you not to find Mythos explanations compelling and convincing. In fact, you will seek out such explanations since they make so much sense to you. By the same token, you will find Logos explanations cold, strange and incomprehensible, and you will avoid them as much as possible.

If you’re a strongly thinking type, you will inevitably be drawn to science, rational metaphysics or mathematics. You will equally inevitably find Mythos explanations preposterous and even insane since they are so contrary to reason. No rationalist can contemplate Abrahamism without a shudder of revulsion and despair. How did a 100% lie come to be accepted by so many as 100% true? Only thanks to the ineradicable irrationalism of the Mythos species.

Ultimate skepticism. What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? – They are the irrefutable errors of mankind." – Nietzsche

*****

Mythos is about storytelling and storyselling. Mythos is Hollywood applied to everything. Ye olde version of Hollywood scriptwriters were ancient prophets, priests and gurus. The idea that these people could ever tell you why the universe exists is simply comical, on a par with expecting George Clooney or one of his screenplay guys to provide the answer to life, the universe and everything. Ultimate reality has nothing at all to do with stories, feelings and wandering tribes in deserts. That’s a fact.

True Religion

True religion is not about God. It’s about the soul. God is the culmination of the soul’s journey, not the start. A god is simply any mathematically optimised soul. All souls are self-solving units of living mathematics.

True religion is not about one Creator who makes everything else (all of which is dependent on him, hence enslaved by him). True religion is about countless independent, autonomous, uncreated, immortal souls with no cosmic master.

*****

The truth isn’t about an eternal conscious being, as Abrahamism claims.

The truth isn’t about non-conscious matter, as scientific materialism claims.

The truth isn’t about a single mental Oneness outside space and time, as Eastern religion claims.

The truth is about countless mathematical minds (monads; souls) that are inherently unconscious but which can dialectically evolve consciousness and finally achieve gnosis (God consciousness): the optimal state of the soul. Monads are self-solving life forces, and the answer they seek is their own divinity. All monads are teleological: their inherent purpose is to become gods. That is the authentic meaning of life. God is the end of this process, not the beginning.

This is a fundamentally Evolutionary universe, not a Creationist universe.

This is a fundamentally living universe (an organism), not a dead universe (a machine).

This is a fundamentally mental universe, not a material universe.

This is a fundamentally unconscious universe, not a conscious universe, but consciousness is something that can and will evolve from the unconscious.

*****

The Jews say that the truth is delivered via stories and commandments relayed to us by the prophet Moses, who allegedly spoke to God on the summit of Mount Sinai.

Christianity says the truth is delivered to us by the platitudes, parables, fables and sermons of a Jewish rabbi called Yehoshua ben Yosef (aka the man-God-Messiah Jesus Christ).

Islam says that the truth is delivered to us by an illiterate Arab who dictated his angelic visions to credulous, superstitious scribes.

Illuminism says the truth is delivered to us via the eternal truths of mathematics.

You can’t learn a single thing about truth from Mythos. Truth is purely a Logos issue. Mythos might be fantastically entertaining, inspiring and moving, but it has zero truth content. No matter how good the story is, you won’t find yourself any closer to the truth.

Mythos cosmology is always ridiculous. Only Logos cosmology can converge on the truth. We live in the Real World, not Story World.

The Wrong Answer

The most important things are family and love. – an anonymous terminally ill man, anticipating his final Christmas

Most people share this view: a sentimental Mythos view. The most important thing, sorry to say, is reason, and knowing what comes next. You are an eternal being and you have had countless families and you have experienced love countless times. If only you could see true reality – from the perspective of eternity (the God’s eye view) – you would never become so emotional about one stitch of this eternal tapestry. It’s reason that offers supreme beauty and brings you ultimate peace, pleasure and knowledge of all things, including why you are here.

The First Philosophers

The ancient Greeks, with their dazzling philosophers, were the first to separate cosmology from theology. However, originally, the views of the Greeks were mythological and theological, like those of everyone else. Homer and Hesiod may be considered the first Greek cosmologists, and they took their inspiration from the religions (or mythologies, as we would now say) of Babylon and Egypt.

The basic view of Homer was that Earth was a flat disk, completely surrounded by a vast, wide (effectively impassable) circular river called Oceanus. The land of the dead was either on the other, far side of Oceanus (hence unreachable from the land of the living), or beneath the surface of Earth (in the unreachable Underworld). In fact, both views can be combined so that the land of the dead is both across the ocean and under the ground.

Above Earth, in the Homeric view, was the lower sky and then the region of aether (pure air, so to speak, breathed by the immortal gods), and above everything was the vault of the heavens – a vast brass dome that enclosed the upper cosmos.

The sun, moon, dawn and heavenly constellations all rose from and set into the great Ocean-river. The sun rose in the East and set in the West, and was then transported back to the East in time for the next morning’s sunrise.

Hesiod conceived a vast dome called Tartarus that matched the sky dome but was under rather than over the Earth disk and was as deep as the sky dome was high. The whole universe thus formed a vast sphere.

So, flat earthers weren’t so flat! They were perfectly happy with the concept of the sphere, but for the cosmos rather than for Earth itself. Later, the Earth was also conceived as a sphere and then became the centre of a radiating set of spheres (or shells) that formed the complete cosmos (the Aristotelian system of crystal spheres).

Mathematically, the concept of a flat Earth enclosed in a sphere is the first step in a mathematical progression to that of a spherical Earth at the centre of a whole set of cosmic spheres. Illuminism takes this progression much further, except it uses complex circles and spheres (i.e. involving imaginary numbers as well as real numbers) that arise from the generalised Euler Formula (the God Equation).

We are in a beautiful universe of circles and spheres (perfect shapes), except they are complex rather than real, hence much harder to visualize and understand. Only mathematics reveals their true nature, not observation.

Chaos

Many ancients spoke of the universe beginning in Chaos. So, what was chaos? For many, it was water (the waters of chaos). Homer said that Oceanus was the origin of everything. Thales, the first philosopher, asserted that water was the arche – the fundamental substance of existence – and said that all things are full of gods. He meant that water was divine, and the source of mind and life. (We would all die without live-giving water, and we are overwhelmingly made of water). Water was not itself conscious but it gave rise to consciousness, through the gods, who then directed the creation of the universe.

Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods. – Anthony Gottlieb

For Thales, Earth was a circular disk floating on water like a piece of wood. Thales was vital in the development of thought by asserting that a substance (water) produced the gods rather than the gods producing a substance. This is revolutionary and gets rid of the gods as Creators. As in Illuminism, the universe creates the gods and the gods do not create the universe.

Water, not gods or God, was the first principle for Thales. Anaximander, Thales’ successor, replaced water with the apeiron (the infinite or indefinite). Anaximenes, the next great philosopher, then suggested divine air as the arche. Pythagoras asserted that it was divine numbers and Heraclitus divine fire (which we would now call energy, defined by mathematics).

The Homeric World

Map courtesy of http://www.atlantismaps.com/chapter_3.html

The Homeric view of the world was that of a flat, circular Earth, surrounded by Oceanus (the world-ocean), considered an enormous river encircling the world, which in turn was surrounded by an enclosing circle of mountains.

The Sun emerges from underneath the Earth (from the Underworld), rises from the easternmost waters of Oceanus and travels along the fixed dome of the sky, before descending into the westernmost waters of Oceanus and back into the Underworld. Alternatively, the sun is placed in a boat and sails around the circular river from west to east (via the north), ready to rise again each day.

Map courtesy of http://philosophy.gr/presocratics/anaximander.htm

Hades

Hades’ name is said to mean unseen; invisible (as he would be if we were permanently underground). He reigned over the unseen and inaccessible realm to which only the souls of the dead could go.

For the ancients, the dead had to end up somewhere. They didn’t vanish into thin air, disintegrate into dust or ascend into the sky to be with the gods; they didn’t enter the sea to be with Poseidon; and they were nowhere to be seen on the surface of the earth. Therefore, the only place left for them was under the Earth.

Homer’s Agamemnon, expressing the common revulsion for Hades, says, Why do we loathe Hades more than any god, if not because he is so adamantine and unyielding?

Hades personifies the finality of death – the inexorable fate to which we are all subject, rich and poor alike, mighty or feeble.

Heraclitus said that Hades (indestructible death), and Dionysus (indestructible life: zoë) were actually the same god: his two faces, the union of opposites.

Hades is the underworld Dionysus. Hades is Dionysus’s secret name, his hidden identity, his unrevealed nature. (A known epithet of Dionysus was Chthonios, meaning the subterranean.)

In the Greek Mysteries, the initiates went down into caves or underground chambers, their descent symbolising their venture into the Underworld and the realm of the hidden Dionysus, Lord of Death. When they rose again (when they were resurrected), they had overcome death and embraced Dionysus’s other aspect – of eternal, irresistible life.

The realm of Hades, a misty and gloomy kingdom, was also known as Erebus. Initially, no souls were judged there and all suffered the same fate, no matter what they did in life. Later, judgement was added to the mix. The virtuous were rewarded and the wicked cursed and punished. Without this notion of reward and punishment (heaven and hell), religion would never have flourished. There would have been no such thing as Abrahamism.

Once you entered Hades’ kingdom, you could never leave. Only semi-divine heroes such as Heracles, Theseus and Orpheus could go in and return. Odysseus chose to call the spirits of the departed to him, rather than dare to descend down to them.

As mythology developed, Elysium, Hyperborea, the Garden of the Hesperides and the Isles of the Blessed all gradually merged into one paradisiacal place where the heroes and virtuous dwelt. This is effectively the notion of heaven, although it was later relocated to the sky and the celestial plane inhabited by the gods.

The Flat Earth

If humanity suffered a catastrophe and lost all knowledge since the dawn of civilisation, you can be sure humanity would once again start off believing in a flat Earth. That theory reflects the way our brains are wired – for dealing with life on a flat plain.

In early Egyptian and Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a flat disk floating in the ocean. The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts reveal that the ancient Egyptians believed Nun (the Ocean) was a circular body surrounding nbwt (a term meaning dry lands or Islands). A similar model is found in the Homeric account. The Biblical Earth is also a flat disk floating on water.

Light and Dark

In ancient Greek mythology, something remarkable happens: the first gods (the Titans) are replaced by new gods (the Olympians). This means that the divine order can be overturned (something impossible in Abrahamism). Not only are the original gods conquered by new gods (their own children), they are even imprisoned as criminals and monsters. This type of mythology necessarily reflects an enormous religious change. The gods of the original believers became outdated and no longer compatible with society, so new, more relevant gods were sought. The new gods, naturally, had to show their superiority over the old gods.

We see such a struggle repeated many times. The monotheistic Jewish God Yahweh replaces the polytheistic Canaanite God El and his Divine Council of Gods. The Bible is obsessed with other gods, and with showing that Yahweh has defeated them (which is bizarre in a truly monotheistic system). In Islam, Mohammed’s Allah must conquer the pagan gods of the Arabs. The heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten was determined to replace the old gods with the monotheistic sun god Aten. The Norse believed in the twilight of the gods, with the gods certain to be defeated in a final Apocalyptic battle.

If old gods can die or be defeated, so can the new gods. It’s time to banish all of today’s gods to oblivion. It’s time for new gods – for human gods.

*****

The ancient Greek universe is characterised as a building, with a ceiling (sky), a floor (earth), a cellar (Hades) and an enormous deep prison (Tartarus) for giants (the Titans).

The Sky, for the new Greek Gods (the Olympians), is permanently bright. Tartarus, for the old Greek Gods (the Titans), is permanently dark. Earth – the battlefield for the opposing forces of the Overworld and Underworld – is sometimes dark and sometimes light.

In Jungian psychological terms, we would say that the sky is the Self (divine consciousness), the earth is the Ego (consciousness), Hades is the personal unconscious, and Tartarus is the Shadow (which is thus the opposite of the Self). The Jungian Collective Unconscious underpins the whole thing.

Hellmouths

There are said to be several entrances to the Underworld. One is at Avernus, a crater near Cumae in Italy. This was the route Aeneas, hero of Troy and ultimate founder of Rome, used to descend to the realm of the dead. The TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer was set over a hellmouth.

The Five Rivers of Hell

The Underworld has five infernal rivers disgorging their contents into the sulphurous, burning lake of hell, their names reflecting the emotions associated with death and the characteristics of death.

1) Acheron, black and deep, is thick with sorrow, woe and regret: the river of sorrow, woe, pain.

2) Styx is full of deadly enmity: the river of hate.

3) Phlegethon, ablaze, is inflamed with anger: the blazing river of fiery rage.

4) Cocytus, a frozen lake rather than a river; a rueful stream: the river of lamentation and wailing.

5) Lethe, slow and silent, is where forgetfulness and oblivion wash over those about to be reincarnated: the river of oblivion, forgetfulness.

In many accounts, the river Styx forms the boundary between the upper and lower worlds, hence it’s this river that must be crossed to reach the realm of the dead.

The Styx was the river where the gods swore their most solemn oaths (breaking such an oath merited death). The water of the Styx had extraordinary properties, and it was this water that made Achilles invincible (he was dipped in by his mother; only the heel by which she held him wasn’t bathed by the miraculous waters, and it was this heel that proved his doom, hence the expression Achilles’ Heel).

The Styx, like all rivers, was connected to Oceanus.

The Fiery One

Phlegyas: fiery; the fiery one.

Phlegethon (from ancient Greek phlego, to burn, to be on fire): the river of liquid fire in hell, a torrent of blazing rage. The Phlegethon – the river of fire – is an infernal stream of molten lava such as flows down from a volcano. It produces a lake of boiling water and mud.

Charon

Charon was the mysterious boatman who ferried souls across the river separating the living from the dead. This was a one-way journey, and the fee was an obolus (a small coin for passage that relatives placed in the mouth of the corpse of their loved one, or, according to a popular myth, two of them on each of the corpse’s eyes).

Paupers and the friendless (with no one to bury them) could not pay the fee, hence were condemned to wander the near shore of the Styx forever.

Although Charon the ferryman is usually associated with the Styx, several prominent classical sources specify the infernal river Acheron as the one on which he plied his trade.

The Return of the Dead

Since, in ancient thinking, the dead were still present in our world, there was a fear that they might be able to escape from Hades and return to the upper world of mortals to haunt them, especially those who had not been buried properly, or denied the ferryman’s fee.

Titanomachy

Titanomachy was the divine war between the Titans (the old gods) and the Olympians (the new gods). We need a new Titanomachy where the old gods of Mythos (especially Abrahamism) are cast down, and replaced by the new gods of Logos.

Erebos (Erebus)

In Greek mythology, the first-born of the immortals were known as the Protogenoi (protos meaning first and genos born). They were responsible for the basic fabric and structure of the universe.

Erebos was the Protogenos (primeval god) of darkness, and the consort of Nyx (Night). His dark mists enveloped the world, filled every hollow and hung as great curtains around the earth.

The name Erebos came to be used as another name for Hades, the dark netherworld.

Oceanus: The World Ocean

In ancient Greek cosmology, Oceanus was a great, fresh-water, nine-fold river encircling the flat earth. From here came all of the earth’s fresh-water, and indeed all of its water in general: oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, springs, streams, lagoons, ponds, aquifers, all salt and fresh water; even the rain clouds.

All of Earth’s land inhabited by people was contained within the inner boundary of Oceanus. It was said that the sun, moon and stars all rose and set into this great body of water. In another sense, Oceanus symbolised the eternal flow of time and regulated Earth’s time.

Beyond Oceanus, lay the farthest edge of the cosmos (as it was then conceived). It was a mysterious, dark and misty shore upon which the hard edge of the great dome of the sky rested upon solid, mountainous, rocky ground.

Underneath the flat Earth was the great pit of Tartarus, into which the new Gods of Olympus cast down the Titans, the old gods. Tartarus was so vast that it formed an inverted dome matching that of the sky dome. Put together, the two hemispheres formed a great sphere that enclosed the entire cosmos (the region of order). Beyond the cosmos was only Chaos – total disorder.

So, the ancient notion of a flat Earth was rather sophisticated. The flat Earth was actually an equatorial disc, poised between the sky and the pit (the gods and the demons, so to speak: heaven and hell).

These concepts never vanished and are still conceptually plausible to many people even today. The cosmos as depicted in the Koran is more or less the one set out in ancient Greek mythology. Of course, modern science completely rejects this notion of a flat disk-Earth inside a cosmic sphere, yet religion still clings to the notion of heaven up there and hell down there.

For the ancient Greeks, the flat Earth divided the two equal hemispheres of above (the Heavens) and below (the Underworld). The world above was the home of the gods and they were thought to live in the highest point known to the Greeks – Mount Olympus. Humanity inhabited the flat disk, and under them was the netherworld ruled over by the god Hades. The world above was the place of immortal, divine life while the world below was the place of the dead and the overthrown old gods – the Titans.

The realm of Hades is everywhere under the flat Earth, but there are very few access points to get down there from the surface. They are all remote, inaccessible and secret, hence why only heroes ever managed to make the trip.

One entrance was in Italy, but it was usually thought that it was necessary to cross vast Oceanus and reach its gloomy far shore, beyond the setting sun, if one wanted to reach the realm of the dead.

To some, the Elysian fields (where the blessed went) were on the surface of that far shore while most ordinary souls ended up below the surface in Hades, and the truly damned joined the Titans in the deepest part of the pit: Tartarus itself.

Apollo’s magical island of Hyperborea was located in the far north of Oceanus, but only those guided by the gods could reach it. As Pindar said, Neither by land nor by sea shalt thou find the road to the Hyperboreans.

The source of Oceanus was a spring located in the cave of the Titan Oceanus (and the vast river was named after him).

Homer depicted Hermes (the conductor of the dead) leading the shades of the dead (ghosts) through the darkness, across Oceanus (the ocean), past the White Rock (petra Leuka), past the Gates of the Sun (pylai Hêlioi) and past the Land of Dreams (demos oneiroi) – and at last to the fields of asphodel (the flowers of the dead), where the souls (psykhai) and phantoms (eidola) of the dead resided.

The Asphodel Meadows in Homer correspond to hell’s vestibule in Dante’s Inferno: the realm of neutrality where the souls of people who are neither good nor evil (who are indifferent) go. This is where the majority of humanity ends up, all condemned because they were neutrals who refused to commit themselves to any cause other than themselves (negative libertarians, in other words).

Dante called all of these souls, lacking a sacred cause greater than their own immediate self-interest, the Ignavi. Nietzsche named them the last men. They are the grey people, the bland and banal, the bystanders in life, those who always seek small, trivial advantages and never do anything grand, interesting and challenging. In Homer, these nondescript, contemptible people stand in a vast field forever, like the grey flowers by which they are surrounded. This is exactly the fate they deserve.

According to some, these neutral souls had to drink from the River Lethe – the waters of forgetfulness – before entering the fields. Thus they lost their memories and identities and became nothing but wandering spirits little different from plants blowing in the wind. If you make no impact in life –if you don’t become a hero – that’s what happens to you. So, make sure you join the heroes.

The Fields of Asphodel are truly hell because that’s where you lose yourself entirely. On his death, the great inventor Daedalus, who famously designed the Labyrinth and the wings for his son Icarus so that he could fly, was given the task of creating roads, underpasses and overpasses in the Fields of the Afterlife to ease the infernal traffic as ever more ordinary human beings ended up there.

In Hades, bios (individual life) is lost and only zoë – the life force itself – remains. Yet since the life force is no longer linked to an identity, it might as well be death. The dead are not really dead – they still exist – but they no longer have meaningful life. Meaning and identity are exactly what they have lost.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus sails to this place, the very edge of the earth, even beyond where the Dawn rises. It’s a permanently dark and foggy place since the sun can never shine there. This is both the edge of life and of death: where the phase transition between the two takes place.

Odysseus comes to the gateway of the underworld, marked by a grove of trees (the Grove of Persephone), the junction of two rivers and the meadow of Asphodel.

Before Odysseus set out on this dark journey, Circe, a goddess of magic, told him, "When you have crossed the Ocean stream, beach your ship by the deep swirling waters on a level shore, where tall poplars, and willows that shed seed, fill the Groves of Persephone. Then go to the moist House of Hades. There is a rock where two roaring rivers join the Acheron: Cocytus, which is a tributary of the Styx, and Phlegethon.

In the Odyssey, we are told, The dead approach him [Odysseus] in swarms, unable to speak unless animated by the blood of the animals he slays. Without blood they are witless, without activity, without pleasure and without future.

Only blood brings back passion, memory and identity to the dead, hence why blood is so revered, even in many modern religions. Jehovah’s Witnesses refuses to undergo blood transfusions for fear that their sacred blood will be contaminated. (Blood represents life and is sacred to God. After it has been removed from a creature, the only use of blood that God has authorized is for the atonement of sins. When a Christian abstains from blood, they are in effect expressing faith that only the shed blood of Jesus Christ can truly redeem them and save their life. – Wikipedia)

The shades of the dead flit like shadows and have not retained the power to think independently. They are like the modern concept of the zombie.

The White Rock

Then Mercury of Cyllene summoned the ghosts of the suitors, and in his hand he held the fair golden wand with which he seals men’s eyes in sleep or wakes them just as he pleases; with this he roused the ghosts and led them, while they followed whining and gibbering behind him. As bats fly squealing in the hollow of some great cave, when one of them has fallen out of the cluster in which they hang, even so did the ghosts whine and squeal as Mercury the healer of sorrow led them down into the dark abode of death. When they had passed the waters of Oceanus and the white rock Leucas, they came to the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, whereon they reached the meadow of asphodel where dwell the souls and shadows of them that can labour no more. – Homer, Odyssey

It has been said that the mysterious White Rock of which Homer speaks is a boundary delimiting the conscious and the unconscious. Beyond it, there is only trance, stupor, sleep, and even death. When the suitors of Penelope are led past the White Rock, they reach the demos oneíron (District of Dreams), beyond which is the realm of the dead, i.e. after sleep and dreams comes death.

The Asphodel

In Greek legend the asphodel is one of the most famous of the plants connected with the dead and the underworld. Homer describes it as covering the great meadow, the haunt of the dead. It was planted on graves, and is often connected with Persephone, who appears crowned with a garland of asphodels. Its general connection with death is due no doubt to the greyish colour of its leaves and its yellowish flowers, which suggest the gloom of the underworld and the pallor of death. The poorer Greeks ate the roots; hence such food was thought good enough for the shades. The asphodel was also supposed to be a remedy for poisonous snakebites and a specific against sorcery; it was fatal to mice, but preserved pigs from disease. The Libyan nomads made their huts of asphodel stalks. – Wikipedia

The asphodel is a grey plant, edible but bland, and was regarded as a food of last resort in the ancient world.

The Hebrew Universe

The Hebrew universe, like that of the other ancient cultures, was three-tiered, consisting of a flat, disk-shaped earth surrounded by a circle of mountains and sitting on water (with pillars sunk into the waters to stabilise it), with heaven above (a solid dome resting on the mountains at the edges of the earth) and the underworld below. The waters of chaos surrounded the whole cosmos.

During life, humans inhabited Earth. After death, they did not join the gods in heaven but rather descended into the underworld (the grave). The underworld (Sheol) was morally neutral, i.e., as in Homer, it did not distinguish between the good and the evil.

So, God, living humanity and dead humanity all had their respective, separate abodes in the cosmos.

The Jews later developed the notion of post-mortem moral judgment by importing this concept from the Greeks (the Orphic sect).

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The Jews believed the sky dome was transparent (crystalline), allowing men to see the blue of the celestial waters above, i.e. it was the water that furnished the blue of the sky.

The dome had windows or sluices cut into it to allow water to enter as rain. The sun, moon, and stars were all located under this vast canopy.

Abrahamism: The Flat Earth Society

The Torah, Bible and Koran are all based on a flat Earth, hence are absolutely false and refuted. The idea of an orbiting spherical Earth in a spherical universe – proposed by the Pythagoreans – was well known in the ancient world, but the Abrahamists chose to reject this in favour of a flat Earth model. Later, the Abrahamists simply pretended that their holy texts referred to a spherical earth. However, they then had a new problem – their infallible text said that the sun orbited the Earth (which the Pythagoreans denied). Yet again, the Abrahamists and their God were wrong. Yet again, they all pretended that their holy texts were entirely compatible with the diametrically opposed scientific facts and hadn’t been refuted at all. If heliocentrism is in the Bible, why was Galileo dragged in front of the Inquisition and almost executed for defending that doctrine? If geocentrism is false, why haven’t all the Christian sects officially admitted that the Bible makes false statements, hence cannot be an infallible text and the Word of God?

Spherical Earth

The non-geocentric model of the Universe was proposed by the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus (d. 390 BCE). According to Philolaus, there was at the centre of the Universe a ‘central fire’ around which the Earth, Sun, Moon and Planets revolved in uniform circular motion. This system postulated the existence of a counter-earth collinear with the Earth and central fire, with the same period of revolution around the central fire as the Earth. The Sun revolved around the central fire once a year, and the stars were stationary. The Earth maintained the same hidden face towards the central fire, rendering both it and the ‘counter-earth’ invisible from Earth. The Pythagorean concept of uniform circular motion remained unchallenged for approximately the next 2000 years, and it was to the Pythagoreans that Copernicus referred to show that the notion of a moving Earth was neither new nor revolutionary. Kepler gave an alternative explanation of the Pythagoreans’ ‘central fire’ as the sun, ‘as most sects purposely hid[e] their teachings’. – Wikipedia

The Heavenly Sluices

Since there were waters above the heavens, there were sluice gates for snow, hail and rain to fall on the earth, and floodgates for flooding the world (as in Noah’s Flood).

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Have you ever looked through the windows of heaven? What did you see?

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The ancients conceived the universe as a kind of temple. Well, that made perfect sense if you believed in gods, but what if you didn’t? The obvious alternative is as a perfect mathematical system based on the perfect circle and perfect sphere.

Stopping the Sun

In the ancient model of the universe, with a moving sun, God could simply stop the sun in its tracks:

Joshua 10:12 Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

Joshua 10:13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

Joshua 10:14 And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel.

So, God can stop the sun and moon and is also an Israeli warrior! How can anyone go on believing this Jewish garbage? It’s an insult to everyone’s intelligence, especially that of the Jews.

Nu

"Nu (‘watery one’) or Nun (‘inert one’) is the deification of the primordial watery abyss in Egyptian mythology. In the Ogdoad cosmogony, the word nu means ‘abyss’.

The Ancient Egyptians envisaged the oceanic abyss of the Nun as surrounding a bubble in which the sphere of life is encapsulated, representing the deepest mystery of their cosmogony. In Ancient Egyptian creation accounts the original mound of land comes forth from the waters of the Nun. The Nun is the source of all that appears in a differentiated world, encompassing all aspects of divine and earthly existence. In the Ennead cosmogony Nun is perceived as transcendent at the point of creation alongside Atum the creator god. ... During the late period when Egypt became occupied the negative aspect of the Nun (chaos) became the dominant perception, reflecting the forces of disorder that were set loose in the country. – Wikipedia

Innovation

The Jews were not at all religiously innovative. Their famous monotheism was inspired by the Egyptian heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten who worshipped Aten, the disk of the sun in ancient Egyptian mythology (and once an aspect of Ra, the great Egyptian solar deity).

Judaism, like Christianity and Islam, is a hugely plagiarised and incoherent religious system. It’s extraordinary that it has not yet been relegated to the ancient mythologies from which it arose. How anyone can believe it’s true is simply mind-boggling.

Ichor

Ichor is the blood of the gods and all immortals and is lethal to mortals. It’s an ethereal golden fluid.

Blood and Air

The ancients had a very simple way of looking at the world: humans had blood and breathed air, gods had ichor and breathed aether, the dead had no blood and breathed Tartarus air. The humans lived on the Earth, the gods above it and the dead below it.

Religion is wholly based on the notions of above (good) and below (bad), purity (good) and impurity (bad). So, the gods are pure and above, the dead are impure and below, and humanity is poised between them. It’s hard to see how mainstream religion could exist at all without the notions of up and down, purity and impurity, and something (us) in the middle.

Illuminism is very different. It’s about mental, dimensionless existence versus material, dimensional existence. It’s about converting potential into actuality. It’s about optimisation via the dialectic. You don’t go up in Illuminism; you go from the spacetime domain to the frequency domain. You’re not pure or impure in Illuminism; rather, everyone starts off as potential and then seeks to optimise that potential in actuality.

The Hyperboreans

The Hyperboreans were a blessed people, sacred to Apollo, god of light and reason. They lived on a beautiful island in the north of Oceanus, beyond the north wind, where the sun shone permanently and their happiness was as unbroken as the sunshine. In other words, it was a paradise for rational, enlightened people – for the Illuminati!

The main river of Hyperborea was the Eridanos, and Oceanus itself supplied its lovely fresh water.

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In time, Hyperborea was relocated westwards, where it became equivalent to the Islands of the Blessed and the Elysian fields, i.e. paradise, heaven itself. It was bright and fertile, full of meadows of perfect Platonic beauty.

The Fields of Asphodel gradually became linked to this idyllic scene, and the shades were pushed under the surface of the earth into the grim Underworld – into hell proper.

Overthrowing the Gods

In ancient Greek mythology, the old Titan gods were defeated by the new Olympian gods and cast down into the pit of Tartarus, allowing the new gods to rule the sky and stars (the heavens).

In Jewish religion, the old Canaanite gods (including El, the father of the gods) were overthrown (in the Hebrew telling) by the single monotheistic god Yahweh, and became the devils and demons of hell (Tartarus, the Underworld).

In a sense, the Christian god Jesus Christ killed Yahweh, and then Jesus Christ, in his turn, was killed by Mohammed and Allah.

The Norse anticipated a Twilight of the Gods where the gods would all perish, marking the end of a cosmic age.

All gods are killed in due course. It’s time the Abrahamic gods and prophets left the stage once and for all.

The Hollow Earth

The modern conspiracy theory of a hollow earth is just a throwback to the ancient view of a great pit beneath the surface of the earth. These ancient ideas continue to exert a powerful hold on the human imagination.

The Mediterranean Sea

Originally, Oceanus represented all the water in the world, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean – which were the two largest bodies of water known to the ancient Greeks. As the Mediterranean grew familiar, Oceanus came to be identified with the waters of the vast, mysterious Atlantic Ocean that led to unknown and strange destinations (and where the great civilisation of Atlantis itself once ruled the waves before suffering an unexplained catastrophe). While the Olympian god Poseidon presided over the Mediterranean, the Titan Oceanus was responsible for the Atlantic Ocean.

Beyond the Dead: The Edge of the Universe

Beyond the landmass of the ancient Greek Earth were the vast waters of Oceanus. Beyond that was the land of the dead and beyond that the edge of the universe, i.e. the edge of the dome in which the Earth was enclosed.

So, in this view, the edge of the universe is a physical location but cannot in practice be reached, hence no one could end up tapping on the walls of the cosmic dome. You have to transcend death and pass beyond the abode of the dead to get there.

Similarly, you could physically reach Tartarus and find the Titans themselves, but to do so you would once again have to be the master of the realm of the dead.

Equally, you could climb Mount Olympus and encounter the gods, but you yourself would have to be a god before you dared ascend the Magic Mountain of the gods. Are you bold enough?

Sacaea

Sacaea was a five-day Babylonian festival to celebrate the new year, and was characterized by drunkenness and licentious behaviour. Traditional relationships were reversed: slaves ruled their masters.

A mock king was chosen from criminals and allowed to rule for the five days of the festival, before being executed. The death of the king was thought to be vital for the renewal of the nation. Rather than kill the actual king, the people killed his temporary surrogate instead.

The Persian King Cyrus introduced the festival in honour of his victory over the Sacaea (the people of Scythia). Cyrus set out tables laden with delicacies and the Scythians were so tempted that they stopped to help themselves, thus losing their battle order, allowing them to be easily defeated by Cyrus’s army.

How Does Your Story End?

A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don’t know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth reading. – Zamyatin

Most people’s stories aren’t worth the read. What about yours? Who’d be interested in your life story?

The Love of God

You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved. – Zamyatin

The Brute Soul

Lower humans have an animal soul, which in effect is no soul. Higher humans have a soul capable of becoming divine. What type of soul do you have?

You’re in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul. – Zamyatin

Bios and Zoe

The ancient Greeks had two words for life:

1) bios for the life of an individual; for finite, qualified life; for mortal life.

2) zoë for the general phenomenon of life; for infinite, unqualified life; for immortal life (of the gods).

In reincarnational theory, we are all both zoë and bios. We have an immortal nature (zoë) expressed through a succession of mortal natures (bios).

The Alternative Meaning of Zoe

Zoe can also be used in another, inferior, sense of bare life, pure life, nothing but life, yet life without character, shape or definition. We might liken it to the blind, striving Will described by Schopenhauer, underlying all things. Bios on the other hand is life with character, shape and definition. It’s directed, sighted will.

Animals express zoë but not meaningful bios. They are purely instinctual.

Often, the bios of one group of people leads to zoë for another group in the sense that meaningful, full bios is stripped away from this other group, leaving them with nothing but meaningless, bare zoë. In the death camps of the Nazis, the Jews were reduced to zoë – the barest level of life – and then even that was taken from them. During the centuries of the slave trade, millions of African Americans were reduced to zoë. Enslavement is zoë.

Capitalism reduces us to zoë too. We all become soulless drones – mindless, zombie consumers with rotten, unsatisfying jobs and a craving to numb ourselves with alcohol, drugs, junk food, junk entertainment and fantasy.

Zoe, in this context, is where life has its meaning taken away, leaving just life itself but with no purpose or meaning. Depressed individuals lose bios and are reduced to zoë. Depression might be defined as the inability to sustain bios. The suicidal lose all contact with bios and then find zoë intolerable too.

Humans who are depersonalized – whose bios is no longer acknowledged – are reduced to the same state of animals. Just as animals are sent to the abattoir without a thought, so are those humans who have been designated as zoë alone (as the Nazis designated the Jews, for example). Their lives can be taken at any time, and no crime has been committed as far as the killers are concerned since crime relates to bios and not zoë.