THE CEDAR MOUNTAIN
We now turn to a discussion of two important aspects of this degree. One, the subject of the Lebanon, which we may consider under several heads; and the other is the Sacred Word: Al-Shaddai, which has an interesting etymological background.
THE LEBANON.
From the earliest times, the Lebanon has been a place of great importance. We can go back at least as far as the times of Gilgamesh, the Hero-King, who actually existed.
According to the Sumerian King Lists, "He was a ruler of Uruk, the biblical Erech, circa 2900 B.C." [Sitchin, Stairway to Heaven, p. 119. Hey, as long as people still use Encarta or other worthless encyclopedias (rather than real Encyclopaedias! like Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example), we can reference Sitchin as a Quotable source. And, it's not that bad, irrelevant, nor should we dismiss it all as mere "spook" disinfo. It stands by itself, and as we start coming across sources, we can appreciate his research. Only, he needed a better index writer and each page needs footnotes!]
Gilgamesh, and his friend/assistant, EnKiDu, went from Mesopotamia, around Arabia to the Red Sea, up through the Sinai, where the Mountains of Mashu are located, up through Palestine, and sought entrance to the abode of the Gods in the Cedar Mountains, the Cedar Forest. This is most definitely the Lebanon. And, in north Lebanon, is Ba'albek: also called Beth-Shemesh, Heliopolis, or City of the Sun. This is an ancient structure. Although in Greco-Roman times, the structures we see in the ruins today were designed and built, the platform goes back to high antiquity. It is at Ba'albek, that Sitchin argues that Gilgamesh travelled, after seeking out Utnapishtim, the hero of the Sumerian Deluge: in order to get advice as to how he could find the plant of immortality. It is also in the region of Ba'albek, that Sheikh 'Adi bin Musafir was born, and lived, prior to getting the call to travel to Mosul. One wonders what it is about Mosul that gets it placed on the destination list of so many people, even today!
An interesting item, worthy of mention, is the fact that if one were to draw a straight line on a map, starting at Mount Ararat (the original Mount of Salvation, or Montsalvat!), and continuing south-westerly, straight to the Pyramids at Gizeh, not only would Heliopolis in Egypt be on the resulting line, but so would Heliopolis in the Lebanon: Ba'albek.
Ba'albek was an original marker for the western boundary of the old landing corridor, so the story goes... the eastern boundary being marked by Gebel Musa in the Sinai Peninsula and Mount Katherine (even though at those times precious little existed there relating to the presently significant reasons for including them on the maps). The central line was Jerusalem, said to be the Second Mission Control Center: the first being at Nippur. This would appear to bear significance today, considering that the two festering sores in the Middle East, these days are Jerusalem and Baghdad and the pus affects the entire planet. Lance Boyle to the rescue!
At Nippur the first DurAnKi was kept, and the story goes that the second DurAnKi ended up in Jerusalem, and we do not disagree with this, considering what we have come across pertaining to esoteric legends concerning the Temple @ Jerusalem. However, evolution migrates in a westerly direction, and Number Three became Rome for a time. Where is it today? Well, it's not in Texas, that much is for sure.
Now we shall run quotes of some of Sitchin's material:
"Tilmun, then, was the location of the Spaceport. The Cedar Mountain was the location of the 'Landing Place,' the 'Crossroads of Ishtar,' -- the Airport of the Gods. And it was to the latter that Gilgamesh had first set his course.
"While the identification of Tilmun and its location is no mean challenge, there is little problem in locating the Cedar Forest. With the exception of subsidiary growths on the island of Cyprus, [NOTE: and in the Taurus Mountains...] there is only one such location throughout the Near East: the mountains of Lebanon. These majestic Cedar Trees, which can reach 150 feet in height, were repeatedly extolled in the Bible and their uniqueness was known to the ancient peoples from the earliest times. As the biblical and other Near Eastern texts attest, the Cedars of Lebanon were earmarked for the construction and decoration of Temples ('gods-houses') -- a practice described in detail in I Kings, in the chapters dealing with the building of the Jerusalem Temple by Solomon (after the Lord Yahweh had complained 'Why build ye not me a House of Cedar?')
"The biblical Lord appears to have been quite familiar with the cedars, and frequently employed them in his allegories, comparing rulers or nations to cedars: 'Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon, with four branches and a shadowing shroud and a high stature... waters nourished it, subterranean streams gave it height,' [cf. the term Underground Stream, and the significance of this in re Nephilim survivals...] -- until the wrath of Yahweh toppled it and smashed its branches. Man, it appears, had never been able to cultivate these cedars; and the Bible records an attempt that had completely failed. Attributing the attempt to the King of Babylon (factually or allegorically), it is stated that 'He came to Lebanon and took the cedar's highest branch,' selecting off it a choice seed. This seed 'he planted in a fruitful field, he placed it by great waters.' But what grew up was not a tall-cedar -- only a willow-like tree, 'a spreading vine of low stature.' [i.e., instead of cultivating a Semi-Divine lineage, he created an all too human lineage, or a spreading vine of low stature.]
"The biblical Lord, on the other hand, knew the Secret of Cedar cultivation:
'Thus sayeth the Lord Yahweh:
"'"From the cedar's crest, from its topmost branches a tender shoot I will take; and I will plant it upon a high and steep mountain...
"'"And it will put forth branches, and bear fruit, and become a mighty cedar."'
"This knowledge apparently stemmed from the fact that the cedar grew in the 'Orchard of the gods.' There, no other tree could match it; 'It was the envy of all the trees that were in Eden, the garden of the gods.' The Hebrew term GAN (orchard, garden), stemming as it does from the root GNN (protect, guard), conveys the sense of a guarded and restricted area -- the same sense as is imparted to the reader of the Gilgamesh narrative: a forest that extends 'for many leagues,' watched over by a Fiery Warrior ('a terror to mortals'), accessible only through a gateway which paralyzed the intruder who touched it. Inside, there was 'the secret abode of the Anunnaki'; a tunnel led to 'the enclosure from which words of command are issued' -- 'the underground place of Shamash.'" -- Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven, 146-7.
Backing up, a couple of pages earlier, Sitchin tells us more of Gilgamesh's mission:
"The Gilgamesh drama reached its culmination in the land of Tilmun, an Abode of the Gods and a place of the Shems. It was there that he encountered an ancestor who had escaped mortality, and had found the secret plant of eternal youth. [NOTE: Said in some places to be water-cress.] It was there that other divine encounters, as well as events affecting the course of human history, occurred in later millennia. It was there, we believe, that the DUAT was -- the Stairway to Heaven.
"But that was not the first destination of Gilgamesh, and we ought to follow in his footsteps in the same sequence by which he himself had embarked on his journey: his first destination on the road to Immortality was not Tilmun, but the 'Landing Place' on the Cedar Mountain, within the Great Cedar Forest.
[OUR NOTE HERE: The Landing Place on the Cedar Mountain would be Mount Hermon, where the Watchers descended according to the Book of Enoch.]
"Scholars (e.g. S. N. Kramer, The Sumerians) have termed as 'cryptic and still enigmatic' Sumerian statements that Shamash could 'rise' in the 'Cedar Land' and not only in Tilmun. The answer is that apart from the Spaceport at Tilmun, from which the farthest heavens could be reached, there was also a 'Landing Place' from which the gods 'could scale the skies' of Earth. This realization is supported by our conclusion, that the gods indeed had two types of craft: the GIRs, the Rocketships that were operated from Tilmun; and what the Sumerians called a MU, a 'Sky Chamber'. It is a credit to the technology of the Nefilim that the uppermost section of the GIR, the Command module -- what the Egyptians called BEN-BEN -- could be detached and fly in Earth's skies as a MU." Sitchin, ibid., 144-5.
Now, why was this place built, in the first place? Again, the learned Sumerian scholar tells us:
"After the Deluge had swept all off the face of the Earth, the first problem facing the Anunnaki was where to get the seeds needed for renewed cultivation. Fortunately, specimens of the domesticated cereals had been sent to Nibiru; and now 'Anu provided them, from Heaven, to EnLil.' EnLil then looked for a safe place where the seeds could be sown to restart agriculture. The earth was still covered with water, and the only place that seemed suitable was 'the mountain of aromatic cedars.' We read in a fragmented text reported by S. N. Kramer in his Sumerische Literarische Texte Aus Nippur:
"'EnLil went up the peak and lifted his eyes;
He looked down: there the waters filled as a sea.
He looked up: there was the mountain of the aromatic cedars.
He hauled up the barley, terraced it on the mountain.
That which vegetates he hauled up,
Terraced the grain cereals on the mountain.'"The selection of the Cedar mountain by EnLil and its conversion into a Restricted ('Holy') Place was, most likely, not accidental. Throughout the Near East -- indeed, worldwide -- there is only one unique Cedar Mountain of Universal fame: in Lebanon. It is the location, to this very day (at Ba'albek in Lebanon), of A VAST PLATFORM supported by colossal stone blocks that are still a marvel of technology. It was, as we have elaborated in The Stairway to Heaven, a Landing Place of the Anunnaki; a platform that persistent legends hold to have been built in pre-diluvial times, even as early as the days of Adam. It was the only place, after the Deluge, immediately suitable for handling the shuttlecraft of the Anunnaki: the spaceport at Sippar was washed away and buried under layers of mud." -- The Wars of Gods and Men, pp. 121-2.
In all of this it is significant: the term cedars is important, in that it refers in some symbol languages, to descendants of the Nephilim. Tall Cedars, especially. Then there is the Masonic side degree, Tall Cedars of Lebanon. This talk of the Babylonian king wanting to cultivate Cedars, only instead, growing a wandering vine... sounds like the eternal problem associated with human-initiated breeding programs. They rarely work, if they ever did. The Landing Place on the Cedar Mountain, being Mount Hermon, speaks of the Mountain where the Watchers descend in the Book of Enoch, and see the daughters of men and find them fair. This is tremendous, indeed. Also, the concept of the tunnels, and the comparison of this area with that of the DUAT, is not without significance to those magical tapeworms of the body of god, like we have heard about being described in The Ninth Arch, by Kenneth Grant. Then again, we havethe Deros, in the Shaver and Borderland Mythos...
Secret Sects in the Lebanon, like the Druzes, like the Maronite Christians, like the emphasis by Jacques-Etienne Marconis de Negre, that part of the Treasure of the Rite of Memphis is held within a Maronite Convent in the Lebanon, says to us that this is all very important.
However, we must remember what we wrote in the segment on the Knight of the Brazen Serpent: that the Lebanon referred to by Pike was actually Qanawat in the Hauran.
The significance of the Lebanon goes back, then, as far as we can go, since we are talking of a Deluge that occurred around 10,973 BCE, according to the Time-System of The Code of the Eternal. And, the fact that the Lebanon is a hotly contested area, even to this day, and that the Cedars and the Secret Sects still exist, is a testament to its Eternal quality.
In the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, El-Shaddai is the Sacred Word of the 22°, the degree under present consideration. The Sacred Words, according to the Cerneau Masons exposed in Blanchard's Scotch [sic!... hic!] Rite Illustrated, are "Noah, Bezaleel, Sadonias." For the reasons we have already given elsewhere, we hold Pike's Book of the Words to be the Authority, as Al-Shaddai is a name that belongs in the locale.
In Blanchard's Ritual for the 32°, the passwords are
1) Phal-Kol, separated
2) Pharash-Kol, re-united
3) Nekam Makah, blow, calamity, revenge
4) Shaddai, the strong, the mighty, a name of Deity
According to Mackenzie, this name is alluded to in Exodus 6:13 as a name of Deity, and in Albright, El-Shaddai is the Patriarchal God, the God of the Fathers, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
According to another source, El-Shaddai/Al-Shaddai is based upon Shadu, a Mountain name. This is a Mountain Goddess of some sort. Yet another suggestion to the Divine Feminine at the root of all of these Big Daddy kickass whiteboy gods.
"SADDAY, 'He of the Mountains,' though a more obviously secondary appellation, belongs semantically with Sûr." -- Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, p. 188.
"It was Moses' acceptance of the old faith in the God of the Fathers that led him to identify Yahweh with the 'God of the Fathers' as well as with Shaddai." -- Ibid., p. 168.
"The paternal god of the Patriarchs, SADDAY, (As I pointed out, the same word does not mean simply 'mountaineer', but properly, 'one who inhabits the mountain[s]'.) is now paralleled in similar ancient caravaneering societies, especially among the early Assyrian merchants of the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries B. C., as well as among the Nabateans and other North Arabian caravaneers in the first centuries A. D." -- Ibid., 108-9.
So, then, it is a specific God, the God of the Fathers, of the Israelites, and cognate with Nergal as discussed above (geographic locales aside), and not forgotten by the time of the Nabateans.
A. H. Sayce, in his excellent Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the religion of the Ancient Babylonians, gives us the following:
"The sacred mounds of Babylonia, in fact, like the Gilgals of Palestine, appear to have been the sites of older structures which had long fallen into decay, and around which fancy and tradition were allowed to play freely. They had in this way become veritable hills -- tumuli, as we should term them in our modern archaeological vocabulary -- and as such deserved the venerable title of sadu, or 'mountain.' New temples like that of 'the mountain of the world' could be named after them, but this did not imply a recollection that the sacred mounds had once been temples themselves. They were rather, like the mountains of the eastern frontier, the everlasting altars of the gods, on whose summits worship could most fittingly be paid to the deities of heaven. And, like the mountains, they were something more than altars; they were themselves divine, the visible habitations of the spirits of the air. It is possible that Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch is right in proposing to see in the Assyrian sadu, or 'mountain,' the explanation of the Hebrew title of the Deity, El Shaddai. [Footnote: Mul-lil is called kur-gal, sadû rabû in Semitic, 'the great mountain,' W. A. I. iv. 18, 15; 23, 30; and in v. 44, 41, 'the god Kur-gal' is rendered by Bel. In the list of Babylonian kings in which the meaning of their names is explained, the Accadian E-Guzi-kharsag-men is interpreted Ê-Saggil-sa-idu-ni, 'Ê-Saggil is our mountain.'] At all events, God is compared to a rock in the Old Testament (Deut. xxxii. 15, Ps. xviii. 2), and the worship of sacred stones was widely spread through the Semitic world." -- p. 407.
This brings us in line with the essays that form Book Three of the work, namely, Is THIS the Holy Mountain? The Stone that Fell to Earth, The World Tree and the Cosmic Pillar. Also, it is worth mentioning that the old name for mountain, Kharsag, is a part of the name of Nin-Harsag, the Lady of the Mountain. And, according to Sitchin, at least, her mountain was on the Sinai peninsula, a place sacred to Hathor. Some very interesting things tie together in this name, and in the imagery evoked by the descriptions above, of the Cedar Mountain.
Now, we shall finish off our discussion of El-Shaddai, by shocking some, perhaps; pleasing others, perhaps; but only representing our findings to date as we have found them.
First, it is not out of place to mention that the Divine and Holy Name, El-Shaddai, is one of the particular bones of contention that the present-day (i.e., mid 1990s, c.e.) crop of no-good Anti-Masons are throwing a temper tantrum over, like spoiled brats in their high chairs, banging their spoons and wailing for dessert. Interestingly enough, it is over this Word, and the Degree of Knight Kadosh, that they have the most problems with. If the Freemasons are pressured into eliminating these, then they will be on the road to getting rid of the whole thing. Traditional Family Values, after all! What a crock.
Nothing can be more Traditional, more Family-oriented, more filled with Values, than the Royal Tradition, and by extension, The Authentic Tradition. Never forget that. What is worthless, immoral, ungodly, is the brand of Christianity that gets on television and begs for money, to keep the make-up and hair staff employed! No! Pat Robertson, you and your diseased breed belong in the arena with the Lions, but we would hope the lions had better taste than that, since they are, after all, the kings of the beasts. Otherwise, throw in a few five gallon cans of antacid tablets and diarrhea medication, and anti-biotics.
We now turn to Kenneth Grant (just for kicks), in his work Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, pages 89 - 90:
"... one of the major god-forms held holy by the earliest cults was that of the Pig, sacred to Typhon, the dark lord of the Draconian Tradition. The pig was considered an unclean animal by later cults because it was known to be the only animal that ate human excrement. [Our note: Humans go on that list nowadays...] It is significant that the Jews cast it out as abhorrent when they switched from the Stellar worship of El-Shaddai (Al-Shaitan) to that of the paternalistic and solar Jehovah. But the pig was originally a glyph of utmost sanctity, on account of a doctrine that involved the absorption of substances which the uninitiated shunned as repellant, which indeed, they are, in their unregenerate or non-sacramental form. When purified and consecrated to the service of the Goddess, however, they are found to be valuable aids to the awakening of the Fire Snake."
And, on page 209:
"EL SHADDAI (Heb.): The primal star-god of the Chaldeans whom the Jews replaced by Jehovah when the solar or paternalistic cult superseded that of the Moon and Stars. EL-SHADDAI is AL-SHAITAN, the SET or SEAT of Power adored in remotest antiquity."
And, we remind the reader to consult the glossary quote of "Shaitan" which we already quoted above, in the section on the Yezidis. Where did Grant get this idea from? Crowley? No, we don't find the Stellar Cult discussed in his writings in our possession, though he does make that remark, quoted in Switzerland, about his ideal form of host! Holy Shit! for sure. We do find, however, traces of this in the writings of such authors as Gerald Massey and the Freemason, Doctor Albert Churchward. They both held Christ to be Horus, and more than that, the dual nature of one Deity, one Force, that Horus and Set represented. This is represented in the Sky, in the stars associated with the North Pole, and the stars associated with the constellations of Leo, Orion, and of course, Sirius. This is beyond the scope of our present inquiry.
In Churchward's work, The Arcana of Freemasonry, which we have quoted from already, concerning the Chaldean priests who migrated to Rome and had an influence on the Collegia, the story of the Stellar Cult which preceded the Solar Cult is given.
"The Second Pyramid (one of three) was built to memorize SUT. 'The Pyramid of SUT, when SUT was the first, the God of the Pole Star South, El-Shaddai.' How long SUT reigned as God it is impossible to state, but that he did so for many thousands of years there is ample proof still extant. It was known by these old wise-men of Egypt that as they travelled North from their original homes -- Equatorial provinces [OUR NOTE: i.e., in the lands of EnKi (Ethiopia) and his sons.] -- SUT would go down and disappear in the underworld, and that Horus (North Polar Star) would rise in the ascendant and be permanently established for ever. Hence the changes, first from SUT being a primary God, Second as a brother to Horus, and third, that 'he descended' as Horus 'ascended'. He then became the type of the Great Evil One in one form, and AP-UAT, a form of SET-ANUP, in another, the guider of the way of the underworld. This is written and symbolized in the Second Pyramid. It is also symbolized as the change from the worship of El-Shaddai (Phoenician name of SUT) to the worship of IHUH, HU, or IU EU, and corresponds to the change from the Eloistic to the Jehovistic God, which was the change from the Stellar to the Solar Mythos. (I Chron. 12:5)."
Turning to the RSV, I Chron. 12:5, to see what Churchward sites as proof of his theory, we find it does not really pertain at all, but if we quote the beginning of the chapter, we get the re-entrance of the Benjaminites into our narrative:
"1. Now these are the men who came to David at Ziklag, while he could not move about freely because of Saul the son of Kish; and they were among the Mighty Men who helped him in war.
"2. They were bow-men, and could shoot arrows and sling stones with either the right or the left hand; they were Benjaminites, Saul's kinsmen.
"3. Elu-Zai, Jerimoth, Bealiah, Shamariah, Shephatiah the Haruphite."
Churchward cites Bealiah in his work. It puts together Ba'al and Yah. That should be of significance to students of the Royal Arch word. Turning to Arcana, pp. 162-3:
"The change in Israel from the worship of El-Shaddai to the worship of IHUH (= Hu or Iu in Egypt); from the Eloistic to Jehovistic God, corresponds to the change from the Stellar to the Solar doctrines in the eschatology of the Egyptians, which can be seen and proved in the Volume of the Sacred Law -- in the book of I Chronicles XII. 5, in which we find that Baal-Jah, as divinity, supplied a personal name. Thus the Baal is Jah, who is one of the Baalim, the primary or superior one of the Seven Stellar Attributes. The one God in Israel was made known to Moses by the two names of Ihuh and Iah. In the Egyptian the one God in the earliest Solar form was Tum -- (the earliest form of Atum-Ra) -- he was Hu hi, the eternal, in the character of God the Father, and IU or TEM, in the character of God the Sun, which two were one."
"Moreover, BELA BAAL was El-Shaddai of the Phoenicians, or was another name for him, and when they changed from the Stellar (represented by Sut-Anup) to Horus, he was no longer to be considered the One God (See Exodus 34:13). 'Thou shalt call me ISHI, and shalt call me no more BAALI' (Hosea 2:16), and therefore to have the Hebrew character of El-Shaddai (or Phoenician rather) as the father, and HU-IU, IAU, ISHI, IHU, etc., as his son, as is represented on our Cross of the 18°, is quite wrong; it has no meaning, and no explanation could be given that would be correct with the Hebrew characters on the symbol as it is now; but if these were changed to the Egyptian, or the equivalent, it would be correct, would correspond, and have the same meaning as YHUH.
"El-Shaddai was not 'a form of Father' to HU or IU in any way. [OUR NOTE: But see the Albright quotes, above.] He was the Primary God situated at the Southern Pole, or hemisphere, for upwards of fifty-one thousand years, and then he was deposed in favour of Horus, the God of the Northern Horizon. This is proved by the two Great Pyramids of Ghizeh, one built for SUT and the other for HORUS; their names are inscribed thereon; it is clearly mentioned several times in the Egyptian Ritual. [OUR NOTE: i.e., the Egyptian Book of the Dead.] All the attributes hitherto associated with Set of the South were appropriated and given to Horus of the North, and this cult lasted at least three hundred thousand years."
Albright associates Horus with Ninurta, one of EnLil's sons. In Sitchin's The Wars of Gods and Men, a parallel is drawn between the wars of Horus and Set, and between Ninurta and Nergal. Churchward regards Set - El-Shaddai as the God of the South Pole. Sitchin, on page 126 of the above-mentioned work, states:
[Dealing with the narrative concerning the parts of Africa which were granted to EnKi's sons...]
"The Southernmost domain was regranted to NER.GAL ('Great Watcher') and his spouse Ereshkigal."
So, then, the original God of the Fathers, of the Hebrews, El-Shaddai, is Set, Seth, Sut, Shaitan, Satan, Ner.Gal, et cetera.
This is more important than it would seem at first.
1. El Shaddai of the Hebrews, Sagg, Indara, Indra, et cetera.
2. Set, Sut, Set-Horus of the Egyptians.
3. Seth of the Sethian Gnostics
4. Shaitan of the Yezidis (Per Kenneth Grant, at least.)
5. Nergal of the Assyrian Priests who migrated to Samaria and, perhaps, too, the God of Dositheos, the Samaritan Messiah, and original for the Sethian Gnostics.
We turn, now, from these ideas, to the history and doctrines of the Druzes, who form a part of the 22° and the 25°, and who appear in Shaddai's territory, and who came into existence after the Nusairi, but before the Yezidis...