So you've decided to tone things down? 😂I trust you've had a wonderful birthday with your daughters.
I had an interesting conversation with my youngest son yesterday, who has recently been finding himself pulled towards Jesus and being a christian. This now means 2 of 3 sons are exploring this - which is really fascinating given they were not raised in a religious home. We talked about all kinds of religions and spirituality when they were growing up, but I never parked that discussion anywhere - outside what it means as beings with a natural desire to know ourselves more deeply.
I asked him what it was he found most attractive about it, and he said the idea that someone could embody that level of love for others. Could he do that himself, without Jesus, I then asked. He thought about it and said, yes, but Jesus must have come to show that potential.
So it's not so much about Jesus I suggested, as it was about him wanting to become more loving and Jesus is his current, most obvious reflection. He agreed, but thought too, there must be something about that particular being. For me this is where the form (Jesus) collapses into the content (love).
And this collapsing can become an obstacle, but it also may be a needed stepping-stone before self-referencing when the external anythings get dropped. As morphic fields of resonance go, Jesus is powerful (I would argue this field is its own thing and so 'real' no matter where one lands on Jesus as an historical figure) as a stepping stone to claiming love as the defining thing about humans. (It's all love, in the end.)
We're shredding a whole reality structure and religions may be the toughest for many of us. So many of the intuitive 'goods' are tangled up in them. It likely feels self-annihilating to drop them, as the detangle gets subtle.
Thanks for being such a clear, bold version of You, Tereza. You claiming you and sharing that, is an act of love. Very best wishes for the best upcoming year yet. 💕
A most excellent birthday with my daughters, thank you, Kathleen!
I can see why your son would be drawn to Christianity. I love Christians! They're a kind and supportive community where people have meaningful conversations about what's important in life. In my experience, they're nice people who care about others and use their religion as a vehicle for positive personal empowerment. It might be good for him.
Like economics, I'm less interested in taking away what we have, that's working for some people, than creating new alternatives. What concerns me is that the projection of love onto Jesus also defines what love is in reverse. Could your sons imagine you taking a whip to them because you didn't approve of them 'changing money in the temple'? Can they picture you saying that a woman doesn't deserve the food meant for sons but even dogs can eat the crumbs that drop from the table? Would you berate them that they can't do anything right when you leave and they don't perform miracles? Would you curse them and say they are no sons of yours?
By the example set by 'Jesus', your love is a weak and womanly thing, because you don't judge whether your sons are your favorite or bad and evil. You don't use violence. All those are subliminal messages from the Bible, and can be used against us anytime they want, once we accept that the God of the Bible is love. The god of the Bible is fear and favoritism, sacrifice and suffering. That's what we've been tricked into calling love.
oh my god (or rather, oh my goddess), this is such a phenomenal answer: wish I could double heart it ❤️❤️
The other thing I might add (not knowing nearly as much about the bible as you), is that when the biggest source of love in the world is projected onto Jesus, a man, and by proxy his Father / God, another male figure, we devalue women’s love and of course women’s experiences, stories, lives, voices, care. No books in the bible are written by women to my knowledge. No women’s stories, first hand, related. The subtle message is “women don’t matter.” And whatever women do, men do better (take cooking for example - male chefs; or nursing - male nurses paid more). If women can love with all their heart…men can too; only better!
I'm finding that it makes SUCH a difference thinking of God as Goddess. I was reading in the Course this morning about the gifts laid on God's altar. And I thought, no way! The Goddess doesn't have a fucking altar. She has a kitchen table where she lays out the food, day after day, with love and tenderness.
In reading When God Was a Woman last night, I was continuing to decipher the words, knowing that Hebrew is a dictation shorthand of 2-3 consonants. And I realized that the word love is the same as the Luvians or Levites who imposed this system. So when they say God is Love, they mean Luv or Lev, iow we own God, and our version of love is fear and obedience.
Interesting hypothesis! Here's another synchronicity from the Goddess. When I'm figuring something out, a new reader might 'like' an old comment of mine that I'd forgotten. On my Doc Malik interview, someone called Fez liked one where I was saying Latin was a synthetic language and didn't derive from Sanskrit. Here's what I wrote:
"On Latin, I just looked up its relation to Sanskrit and it seems like it would have devolved, if anything. Sanskrit uses musical tonalities and the masterpiece work of its grammar was produced in 450 BCE. It's called the language of the gods for its beauty and subtlety."
So now, this has all changed meaning. 'Language of the gods' means language of god the fukker. The northern invaders brought it with them. Latin probably did derive from it, as the hexing language of the ruling caste. And all the Latin-derivatives, which kept those hexes.
I think it's more likely that 'to love' means 'to die.' It's the sacrifice demanded by 'the gods' as a proof of love.
I've been watching this on a Hebrew woman explaining why they're immortal and gods: https://youtu.be/YHpMz_PTn50. I'll post it in my next episode. So maybe Luvian, love and live are all related because they're the race of gods who never die. According to them, o' course.
I don't think I did a good job explaining their attraction to Jesus, and they both are pretty clear on the many distortions we find in the bible. Again I see it as a stepping stone in a larger exploration, which I hope brings them both into a more direct-connect with their own divinity.
Just like so many other things in this world that purport to be one thing, while the truth in practice leaves such a bitter taste.
One of my favorite expressions is that we often have to find out what we are not, before we can discover what we are.
I can certainly point to that in my own life. It continued until very recently when I discovered that I was complete without needing any other identity, or outside authority.
"Great re -Set "...nice. It reminds me of how ISIS is now associated with terrorism and violence, and GW Bush's "war on terror " pronounced like "terra".
Goddess awareness can help remind us that a conscious spirituality takes into account the feminine principle in both males and females.
And becoming aware--from the perspective of consensus duality--that we have all likely lived many, many lives as the opposite sex, just who is victim and who is perpetrator, historically speaking, can be quite a humbling experience.
Yes! I can't believe it took me so long to see the connection between Set and the Great ReSet. The naming of ISIS was an obvious tell indeed. I hadn't thought about terror but I see what you mean. It has the same root as earth, ground. And there's terroir that means the distinct characteristic of a specific place, exactly what the invaders destroy.
I agree that there's a reason we all have two sides of the brain that correspond to the masculine and feminine. Where a woman becomes fundamentally different than a man is when she becomes a mother. I don't think that's just a function of reproductive organs that operate in isolation. The link between mother and child is sacred, and the religion of a conquerer doesn't recognize that.
It isn't that it's a male perspective because those settled societies that were culturally advanced were half men. It's the supremacist mindset where might makes right. They exclude women but also exclude the vast majority of men, who aren't looking to rule or be ruled, but want to raise families in peace.
Yes, agreed. In recent years I've been introducing to various clients and spiritual seekers the concept of the dominator mindset/crisis brain.
As our capacity for thought grew so did our eventual identification with form--which includes the mental " me". This egoic condition makes us over-emphasize our beliefs, our sense of separation and not enoughness. Our experience of lack, of not knowing/uncertainty, even a contrary belief from another, was/is seen as a threat to us.
Thus our egoic condition distorts our perception of self and of reality and makes us dysfunctional. This impels us to operate from the survival brain centers. During an imminent threat, domination, submission, aggression, deception, expedience, competition, rigid hierarchy etc. are invaluable survival mechanisms.
Both sexes suffer from this egoic dysfunction/survival brain dominance. (Which also engages hundreds of cognitive biases which further distorts our perception of reality and furthering the red alert retreat to to survival-threat mode.)
Of course we also have a nurturing, altruistic, empathetic, collaborative, sharing and caring side. But this side gets suppressed frequently during the day in favor of the survival centers due to the egoic condition making us feel incomplete and unsafe.
I like the unerased edits. They read like poetry, and introduce those incomplete thoughts ;-) Very astute and subtle observations. Sometimes people ask me which empire my book aims to dismantle. I answer, "First, the one in your mind."
Say no more - your daughter sounds like someone I would like.
I'm thinking of making a "Fuck Israel" bumper sticker. That would really chip everyone off, and a dare to do something about it to our corrupt government.
But alas, my fighting days are over. I am content to think it every day and chuckle.
And to be clear, I don't hate Jewish people. I don't care what anyone is. I just hate Israel, and I hate our government for jamming it down our throats.
Thanks to you, we can now await the "Substack is a hotbed of Anti-semitism" headlines.
Good... I'll drink to that. That battle is looming.
As far as gods and goddesses, I believe we each have always encompassed both energies.
Gender is body form and function, nothing more.
As to God, I feel it best to resist anthropomorphism when it comes to the creator. However, based on our history of male domination, I am happy to allow the imagining of the creator as female.
Especially if it pisses off any of our institutions.
That Vold family belonging in me is difficult to ignore. Anything that challenges the status quo is right up my alley.
Haha, she would like you too. Did I mention that she's an admin at a large law firm that defends insurance companies against claimants? She had a poster of Luigi Mangione in her cubicle until HR made her take it down ;-)
Oh no! what a terrible job - completely opposite of who she wants to be. Why/how stay in such a role defending the criminal insurance industry against the people robbed and subjugated? The new feudal system is this exact thing, accomplished nowadays by technocracy, surveillance state, and strengthening the gulag slave state to finish taking and wasting earth and all resources. I couldn't do it.... work for those scumbag fukkers. I hope she gets out quick and finds something more aligned with her values.
Ha, you're reading her mind. She's been applying to others and volunteering. She did get her paralegal degree (on the clock but we'll keep that on the down low). She's in Greece right now so we'll see if any snakes lick her ears like the OG Cassandra so she can tell the future in a way that people can hear.
good news! She will do well kicking some parasites' asses! :D Ha. just finished a novel called The Moon Under Her Feet - the best thing about it is that the Magdeline had a snake that she let bite her in order for her to receive direct visions and other powers from the Mother Goddess - a direct line. So I hope a snake doesn't bite, but rather tickles, her ear.
Meh. It was OK but I finished it. Started slow and slowly built the story of Jeshua but mainly it was about the Magdalenes and Priestesses. Some parts I liked; how she wove in the Inanna Descent story (one of my favorite books on the Inanna story was Descent to the Goddess) and Isis and Osiris story. It's a little too 'romance novel' for me,but I think she did a pretty good job keeping with those horrid patriarchal times. I never bought the story of Judas being the' bad guy' betrayer scapegoat, always thought there was more to that. I think the idea of the plot and how things may have gone down is plausible and believable. It would've of course been covered up so as to subjugate the people and make them fearful and obedient, which has always been my objection to that fukker Yahweh.
You started out subtle… lol. Can anyone expect anything less of your especially on your day of birth? I still need you to look up a picture of the Church of Set guys. Especially LeVey and Michael Aquino and his eyebrows who might require have their own satanic zip code. Good Lord…erm… Lordess? That’s a lot of religious history that I know nothing about and reading these names mentioned, that I’ve never even heard of, reminds me of how much more there is to learn… sheesh!
I like the idea of a goddess. But I don’t want to be attracted to the idea simply because I’m a broad. I connect with it because of the nurturing quality of a mother and because women tend to shun war and promote love. But innately, I feel like God(dess) is both masculine and feminine. That’s it’s incomplete if it’s only one.
I hope it was a fabulous birthday and I hope that carries through the whole year!
Woah! I didn't know that eyebrows could be rendered as horns. And Satan wanting to go back to his original name as Set--duh! How could I have missed that? Of course the Hebrew consonants are the same, of course Satan is Set!
There's so much unconscious going on. If we look at Hebrew women having to address their husbands as Lord, and then us saying 'good Lord,' it's still a form of bowing to our masters. Reading about the highly developed civilizations that were possible when war wasn't a factor makes me realize how far we have to go to take back our power--over ourselves, not others.
And yes, it's all about the nurturing quality of a mother. You can't even imagine a word like 'Lord' to be said to a mother. Right? We'd never want that. And that's an important difference. Thanks, Tonika!
Didn’t know they had to refer to their husbands as “lord”. lol. My gay friend used to always say “Lord… and Taylor” 😂 so I could never take the word seriously.
Where you see rebellion against a rapist god, I see windmill jousting.
I don't know whether or not the last Christian died on the cross. I don't know whether there is even any truth to the poorly translated ancient tabloid journalism some people call the word of God.
The gift we are:
I have faith that in each human there is a sacred potential for goodness.
I have hope as I imagine future possibilities of flourishing goodness.
I have love as I extend my best wishes toward everyone and remind myself that loving kindness enriches me and costs nothing.
I am heartened by the biblical mythos, even when mixed with confusing "telephone games" and bad translation, that indicates we each might be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, that we each are a gift.
I'd say my life is a gift and I realize I am humanity and I have faith and hope and love. I'd agree with St. Paul that we remain with faith, hope, and love, and that the greatest and most important of these is love.
Love?
Shall we "make love" or "love the one we're with" or ritualize tribal fellowship?
What love?
Not erotic love. Not filial brothetly love. Rather agape, love of caring, empathy, right relation, appreciation, respect, and self-reliant principled character.
This is just me, doing the best I can using words while trying to talk about things that are obviously beyond words, applying my small heart, my smaller brain, and my over-confident ego, such as they are.
What do I know? Nothing really. This is just my best guess so far.
I watched the beginning of Max Igan's Evil Against Integrity, where he shows the clip of the Bernie Sanders rally and the police tug away the Free Palestine banner from the woman. At first I thought the crowd, when they notice, were booing her. And then I realize they're booing the police. And when the whole crowd lifts up their fists and starts chanting Free Palestine, I just started sobbing. It was such a relief to see so many sane people in one place. I'll definitely send this to Cassandra. It will be heartening to her. Thanks, Julius.
Thanks for letting me know that Catchadragon is Gerard. He's been so appreciative of my recent pieces that I wondered if I had the gender right. I'll read his piece later today, when I have a chance to catch up with Catcha ;-)
I loved that post on Myth of The Terrible Mother. I actually didn't know anything about the origin of that myth, so thanks for that addition to my theological discourse! Remember, I'm a Roman Catholic theologian! You already know I believe that "god," the creator had to be female.
I've also have done more than 30 years of research on two different but not totally unrelated topics. 1) the Anunnaki, and 2) who and what was Jesus. I'll briefly explain #2. Jesus spent those "lost years" from birth to age 30 in India to escape Herod's demand that all male children on 2 years of age were to be executed. The three wise men from the East, we traders, and probably took him and at least his mother to India to escape.
The gospel stories pick up when at the age of 30, Jesus reappears and begins teaching. Fast forward to the crucifixion. From incredible, ancient scrolls kept in a monastery high up in the mountains of India, there is documentation about Isis (Jesus) and what he was doing in India during those lost years, AND after he supposedly died on the cross.
It seems that he achieved the highest level of Yogis, who had special powers to heal, levitate, and translocate! He learned and practiced Buddhism, which promoted an ideal way of living in relation to others. This is what he was teaching when he returned at the age of 30.
Now, he did not actually "die" on the cross, but achieved the highest level of consciousness to withstand death. The women who anointed his body were actually healing him and bring him back from apparent death. Those appearances to his disciples after the "resurrection" were his ability to translocate, appear and disappear. Why? To avoid further persecution. Freaky, huh?
The "ascension in to heaven," was really Isis returning to India where he and the Apostle Thomas continued to teach and practice these highest levels of consciousness. When Isis actually died, Thomas continued teaching until he died. There is no record of Isis' burial place, but there is a place where his Mother Mary is buried.
In actual fact, there is nothing about Jesus forming a "church," only that he sent his followers out to spread his teachings! The gospels were oral tradition for at least 60 years after Jesus supposedly died, and there were many of those oral stories that never made it into the "official" cannons of the NT!
The whole lie/myth began with the Council of Nicaea in 325 when Emperor of Rome, Constantine, commandeered the first "doctrines" of the approved "church of Jesus Christ." There are many who believe this was when the "Holy Roman Catholic Church" was created and the whole story made up to fit the political narrative Constantine wanted and need to consolidate his power.
Aquinas and others then crystalized these doctrines about the immaculate conception, virgin birth, the trinity, the transfiguration, the Eucharist, etc etc etc. Subsequent councils defined all of the other dogmas, including the infallibility of the popes. All MAN made bullshit.
There's obviously a whole lot more about what came before Jesus appeared on the scene, and how all of this bullshit was created.
I do believe Jesus was a historical figure and that he was a radical reformer who was killed because he was a threat to the Jewish status quo. Personally, I believe in the Radical Jesus and the simple message he taught about love. Those who lived that message, lived in the spirit of the creator and would achieve the fullest of what it means to be created "in the image" of the creator. All of your research about the Mother makes sense with all of this.
Make sense? There is so much more about the Anunnaki for another time, but they predate the Jewish Old Testament, by tens of thousands of years, going back to the clay tablets of the Sumerians and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The ancient kings and queens, the giants, and the Nephilim of the OT were really descendants of the original Anunnaki. This stuff turns everything we have ever learned upside down.
Thank you for posting your comment here, Regis! I'm happy to have your deep knowledge of 30 yrs of research on the Annunaki and Jesus. The revelation that I had, when you emailed this to me, is that Jesus is Isis writ Male--which will be the title of another piece. I have been puzzling and puzzling over where the name Jesus came from and what it means, since we know there's no J in Aramaic and without the vowels it's just s-s. Yes! Yes! Is-is!
I realize this isn't exactly a revelation since you told me as much, but I take a different meaning from it. All the Hebrew names are ways of usurping the gods. Israel is IsisRaEl. And we know that the J is an I in ioudaios: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/what-is-a-jew? So the translation of Jesus into Isis is obvious, once you see it.
I see it as another attempt to usurp the Goddess, as Merlin Stone points out for others.
I'm about 5 yrs behind you with 25 yrs of researching scriptures, although for 10 of those I switched my focus to economics. The birth narrative of Jesus doesn't fit the history. When the census was being done for taxation, it was under the Roman proctorate. Herod the Great had died and his son Herod Antipas wasn't yet in charge. So he couldn't have declared the death of the first born sons.
And a belated happy birthday from me, must be great to be 35 years old!! 😊 🎉 And yes to Year of the Goddess!!
I wonder if you’re familiar with the work of eco-philosopher Valerie Plumwood? She wrote a superb book called “Feminism and the Mastery of Nature” which you might enjoy.
Like you, she’s big on logic, throwing light on how Greek philosophy has ruined society (lol), and is an anarchist who is neither keen on the denial of difference (“we are all one” / deep ecology’s erasure and obliteration of boundaries) and not keen on dualism, ie the rigid adherence to hierarchical differences that are marked by relations of power, subjugation, homogenisation, backgrounding, radical exclusion, incorporation and denial of dependency and relationship.
Thank you, LoWa! BTW, I meant to say in reply to your comment above that Neshma, who's on the thread as Sane Franciscan, shares your heritage. She has a video series on Beige with some great plays on the word that I can't remember now.
Valerie Plumwood sounds fascinating! I have so many great recommendations from you. The Creation of Patriarchy and Krivda: the Godtrix against the Matrix are setting on my shelf now. I also have a sci fi fantasy I picked up called Godkiller. The name has been occurring to me as I wrote this episode.
Your like my Lovely mother! She is 64 and looks like 30. Same goes to you! And a happy birthday. You taurus too? Mine is in 8 days. Taurus taurus go taurus! Ba’Al fitting graciously!
Couldnt stop thinking of tim munchin song préjudice when reading your article.
I feel ashame of my sex, to make woman feels like objects…. But f*kk i like b** bs🤣😂😅😉
Happy birthday to you and god your book is great! Aint over yet but i have few spare time lately. When done ill write you back
Haha! I don't think it's objectifying women if you like boobs AND brains ;-) You're not like Indra saying 'The mind of woman brooks not discipline. Her intellect has little weight.'
And proof of that is that you say 'god your book is great!' although I must correct that to 'goddess your book is great!'
Thank you for the compliment, happy to be in good company with your lovely mother. You look much older in your thumbnail!
A technical point: The claim that Indo-Aryans were ‘big sailors who navigated the rivers and coastlines of Europe and the Near East' is not well-supported by archaeological or linguistic evidence.
I'm making my way through David Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel, and Language (which is brilliant, but incredibly dense), and the Proto-Indo-Europeans (of whom the Indo-Aryans are a branch) were not seafarers. They were charioteers who conquered much of the world through the combination of several technological innovations, such as the domestication of the horse, the wheel, the chariot, and metallurgy (specifically bronze-working). They also likely a clan-based feast system through which they extended their culture by incorporating local chieftains of various ethnicities and languages.
If you look at the linguistic evidence, you will see that many sea-faring terms in Indo-European languages come from Semitic, not P.I.E. roots. This suggests that they were borrowed into Indo-European languages, probably from Phoenician.
I agree with the Gimbutas/Stone premise that Aryan invaders with a strongly patriarchal culture overran the more matriarchal cultures of Old Europe, but I think that Stone and others like her sometimes twist the facts to fit their narrative.
Thank you, Crow, for geeking out in my comments. I learn so much when you do! I looked up the whole quote on the 'big sailors' and, in fairness to Stone, it says, "their earlier more speculative appearances in prehistoric times as big sailors ..." I know there are many theories about the Phoenicians as the source of imperialism or rule by foreigners, but I haven't found the evidence compelling.
Here's the takeaway from Merlin's research for me: 1) settled indigenous cultures with advanced skills in agriculture and writing had supreme female deities and corresponding matrifocal societies and horizontal structures that went back to 9000 BCE. 2) male deities were imposed by northern invaders led by a priestly caste of Indo-Europeans who may be the Levites or Luvians. 3) under the priests were the aristocratic charioteers known by the Indo-European name maryannu 4) you bring up the metallurgy needed for coinage, which might be the Kennites or Biblical descendants of Cain, also needed for imperialism 5) the ordinary thugs or terrorists were a different race of Habiru or Semitics, recruited among itinerant shepherds turned into terrorists.
So to answer whether the invaders were PIE or Semitic, the answer may be both. But the rulers and priesthood, killers of God the Mother, were Indo-European from the evidence.
I appreciate your thanks... I thought maybe I was spamming you... but it's not often I get a chance to share the obscure linguistic knowledge I've acquired in the last year.
I think the invaders of Old Europe (and India) were Proto-Indo-European/Aryan... but there were equally objectionable & patriarchal religions in the Middle East. I don't think it boils down to a single root culture being responsible for all the world's evil.
I think that you and I both identify as anarchists, is that correct? So finding where and how the concept of rule over others, iow empire, became legitimized is key. No, of course, the vast majority of Indo-Iranian-European Aryans stayed put. And their deities may have also been female-personified--I know Frances Leader has written about that for the Celts.
The technique combined the threat of violence, the bribe to the existing rulers of coinage and taxation, and the appeal to the egos of men for supremacy over women. They also provided their women to men of the ruling caste to infiltrate and control them.
The Levites introduced the concept of evil as the nature of humans, original sin. And particularly the nature of women. If you can find an earlier source of this ideology, please provide it. Before they mythologized the idea that one man was divinely appointed to rule over others, a person who desired that was seen as sick. At least that's my understanding of the indigenous american concept of wetiko.
I for one would love to know if anyone finds definitive evidence either way on this!!
As an Indian, I grew up with stories of the “Aryan invasion” and thought this was the basis of colourism in India. I’m dark skinned like my dad (but other half of my family - mother and sister - super fair skinned, can easily pass as white). And as one of the only two brown girls in my class in India (punjab), I really felt it!!
But I have been recently binge-listening to a podcast called EMPIRE by Anita Anand and William Darymple (are you familiar with this one, Tereza?) to learn more about Indian history (British empire) and the history of lots of other empires and I heard a offhand comment that the Aryan invasion story wasn’t legit so I’m intrigued in learning more. It was in the context of another historical conversation and they didn’t elaborate on it further in the podcast.
I'm still trying to get the chronology straight in my head. The Heka Khasut ruled Egypt from 1638-1530 BCE. The Habiru were terrorizing Egyptian towns in the 14th c BCE. But the northern invaders to Egypt go back to 3000 BCE according to Stone.
Doesn't the Indo in Indo-European refer to Indian? I've been wondering how the Indo-Europeans could invade India? And I'm not clear exactly who the Aryans are, although it seems like Iranian has derived from it, although they wouldn't have been indigenous, right?
Indian was invaded by Proto-Indo-Europeans, meaning that they came before both Indians and Europeans...
They came from the Caspian steppes in what is not
The word Aryan was used to refer to the ethnolinguistic group now called "Proto-Indo-Europeans" up until the end of WWII... If you read an older linguistic book like The Loom of Language, the term Aryan is clearly used in that way.
After the Nazis, the term Aryan acquired negative connotations and most people today think Aryans were a product of Nazi propaganda.
The term Aryan is still used in the academic literature but it is used in a much narrower sense, to refer to one branch of the Proto-Indo-European tree.
David W. Anthony explains how assumptions about the racial characteristics of the speakers of an extinct language have led to enduring confusion about the word Aryan.
Proto-Indo-European, the linguistic problem, became “the Proto-Indo-Europeans,” a biological population with its own mentality and personality: “a slim, tall, light-complexioned, blonde race, superior to all other peoples, calm and firm in character, constantly striving, intellectually
brilliant, with an almost ideal attitude towards the world and life in general”.
The name Aryan began to be applied to them, because the authors
of the oldest religious texts in Sanskrit and Persian, the Rig Veda and
Avesta, called themselves Aryans. These Aryans lived in Iran and eastward into Afghanistan—Pakistan—India. The term Aryan should be confined only to this Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family.
But the Vedas were a newly discovered source of mystical fascination in the
nineteenth century, and in Victorian parlors the name Aryan soon spread
beyond its proper linguistic and geographic confines. Madison Grant's The
Passing of the Great Race (1916), a best-seller in the U.S., was a virulent
warning against the thinning of superior American “Aryan” blood (by
which he meant the British—Scots—Irish-German settlers of the original
thirteen colonies) through interbreeding with immigrant “inferior races,”
which for him included Poles, Czechs, and Italians as well as Jews—all of
whom spoke Indo-European languages (Yiddish is a Germanic language
Oh yes I’m still working my way through your book chapters you’ve been generous to record! This one looks fab.
I started reading Darymple’s book “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed The World” and I couldn’t believe how much trade there was between India and Rome back in the day! Some documents suggest as much as a third of the Roman Empire revenue could’ve come from customs duties paid by Indians in their imports…and India was termed the sink of all the world’s gold as we sold lots of things (spices, ivory, perfumes etc) for gold and silver coins…
One thing that I did grumble a bit about was all these rich Indian dudes founding new religions. Buddhism was founded by an elite prince who had never seen suffering and left his wife and kid to go “find himself”, giving away his possessions but knew he could run back to his king daddy anytime? He basically just ghosted his wife…Buddhism appealed to merchant classes (their wealth taken as a sign of good karma) and unlike Hindus who were technically forbidden from travelling by sea or interacting with foreigners, Buddhism was closely linked to trade by sea and wealth of Buddhist monasteries grew as a result (even charging interest in loans…). Buddhism really took off when Chandragupta sided with Alexander the Great in his last great battle in India and then became the leader of a new empire; later the grandson of Chandragupta, Ashoka, went on a empire building spree, resulting in terrible carnage and destruction and suddenly became enlightened by Buddhism and started spreading it around his empire.
And Jainism was also founded by a disillusioned Indian aristocrat.
Urgh sad to see all the rich and powerful empire building men dictating the religions! And how money, politics, religion and patriarchy have been so interwoven in India..Anyway this is a bit of a side rant based on the Darymple readings that I thought you might appreciate based on our interest in empire, money, religion and patriarchy ha.
I was interested in ancient India’s links to the rest of the world so have just picked up a book called an “African History of Africa” by Zeinab Badawi with a ton of African scholarly sources and “Land Between two rivers: A 5000 Year History of Iraq” by Bartle Bull. Will keep you posted if I find any clues there!
There are also people in India who consider themselves indigenous so some of this may be in their ancient stories. Will check with some relatives on this who’ve studied the topic including learning more about Adivasis (tribal peoples; some first tribes who had more pagan / animist spirituality and didn’t do idol worship nor believe in reincarnation) — some of their pagan beliefs of course became incorporated into the more dominant religions - Vedas, Hinduism etc as well as related practices like Ayurveda.
If there are indigenous peoples in India then I for one would very much like to know where my ancestors came from!
I think that current scholarly consensus holds that the Proto-Indo-European speakers (PIE), or more specifically the Indo-Aryans, migrated into and conquered the northern parts of India sometime during the 2nd millennium BCE. This is supported by linguistic & archaeological evidence, although the exact nature of the "conquest" (violent invasion vs. gradual migration and assimilation) is still debated. The Aryans must have had a political system that assimilated collaborators in the areas they conquered; otherwise they wouldn't have had the numbers to conquer so much of the world. It is plausible that this involved a kind of aristocracy that local chieftains could join. Possibly, religious conversion was a necessary step to joining this elite.
India today is famous for its extraordinary linguistic diversity, but in very broad terms, the country’s languages divide into two major families:
In the north, the dominant languages belong to the Indo-European family (such as Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, and Marathi), which descend from the Indo-Aryan branch of PIE.
In the south, the largest language family is the Dravidian family, which includes major languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam.
If we're looking for an example of a peaceful civilization prior to Indo-Aryan arrival, the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) is particularly fascinating. Flourishing between roughly 2600 and 1900 BCE, the IVC is characterized by a lack of clear evidence for warfare or social hierarchy (such as palaces, large temples, or mass graves)
Because of this, some scholars (more speculative and on the fringe) have even romanticized it as a sort of “egalitarian” or “proto-communist utopia,” though mainstream archaeology is more cautious with such labels.
So although this is a pretty superficial analysis - I don't much about the Indus Valley Civilization - Tereza's theory does seem to hold up in its claim that the Aryan invaders were more violent and patriarchal than the people they conquered & displaced.
You're absolutely right... I've been on the case on trying to figure out the rise of statecraft for years now... It's a very deep rabbit hole. It would be convenient if statecraft only arose in one place, but that does not appear to be the case. Statecraft very probably has different origins in Mesopotamia, China, Mesoamerica, etc...
I think James C. Scott has done some of the most valuable work in his amazing book Against the Grain, which shows that all early states were grain states. This is key - it suggests that in order to control an entire population, you have to control their food supply.
Very funny quote and your response here: “Are we to believe that the foundations of Western Civilization were laid by an ill-fed people living in perpetual state of partial intoxication?”
Um… was that supposed to be a rhetorical question?
I think this parallels nicely with my analysis of the Joseph story in Genesis, when the people trade their livestock, land and lives for grain. It wasn't just a story, it was allegory: 16 And Joseph said to them, Bring your cattle, and I will give you bread for your cattle, if your money is spent. 17 And they brought their cattle to Joseph; and Joseph gave them bread in return for their horses, and for their sheep, and for their oxen, and for their asses; and Joseph maintained them with bread for all their cattle in that year. https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/hebrews-in-egypt-slaves-or-masters
Why didn't they eat the cattle instead of trading it for bread? As you say, it made it possible to tax them, as the archons did in Greece with barley before the invention of coinage. All the same people, the same bloodline, I suspect.
Another classic anarchist study of the rise of statecraft is Fredy Perlman's Against His-Story, Against Leviathan. It's available for free on Youtube. It's a mindbender.
Okay, I'm going to geek out a bit here, because I take a serious interest in historical linguistics and most people have no idea about the Semitic influence on Proto-Germanic.
This is from John McWhorter's book Our Marvellous Bastard Tongue:
Proto-Germanic Was Full of Orphan Words
A final and conclusive piece of evidence that there were, at the very least, some people of some kind stirring things up is that no less than a third of the Proto-Germanic vocabulary does not trace back to Proto-Indo-European.
With the other two-thirds, we can first figure out what the Proto-Germanic word was—like daukhtrd for daughter—and then compare that word to daughter words in the other Indo-European subfamilies, eventually working out that the Proto-Indo-European root was dhugh₂tér.
But with a mysterious many of the Proto-Germanic words, we just hit a wall. There are no cognates of these words in other Indo-European languages, and thus no ancestral Proto-Indo-European root can be reconstructed. Earlier than Proto-Germanic, the trail runs cold. These words often refer to seafaring (sea, ship, strand, sail), warmaking (sword), fish (carp, eel), and formal social institutions (knight).
Note, for example, that there is no word akin to sea in any other European language you might be familiar with. In the Romance languages, we have French mer and Italian mare. In the Slavic languages, Russian has more, Polish morze. Over in Celtic, Welsh uses môr. From the shape of all those words, it’s no surprise that Proto-Indo-European is thought to have had a word like mere, referring to something like a lake.
But in English we instead have this sea thing, with cognates like German See and Dutch zee. Why don’t we English speakers refer to eating something like “mar-food” instead of seafood? Sure, Germans also have Meer as an alternate. But where did See come from?
Now, one way of approaching this is to just treat it as an accident. Who knows, after all, whether in other Indo-European languages, words related to these seemingly orphan ones in Proto-Germanic once existed but dropped out of use by chance? Maybe it just so happened that a Proto-Indo-European root survives only in one of the many branches of the family. Although we would have to wonder why it would have disappeared in so many branches so uniformly—but still.
Or, the meanings of words can change so much over time that a Proto-Germanic word might trace back to a Proto-Indo-European root with a completely different meaning—so different that no one would suspect the connection.
For example, the word punch, when referring to a drink, comes not from a Proto-Indo-European word for liquid, but from its word for five—via the Hindi word for five, because the original recipe was developed in India and used five ingredients. Shitte happens.
And besides, when scholars put their heads together, they can often figure out a Proto-Indo-European root that the Proto-Germanic word could have come from, via resemblances that no one happened to notice before.
So, one leading scholar of how languages change has only this to say about the issue in a recent work:
“Shifts in the meanings of words and the replacement of old lexemes by new ones are universal types of language change; it is therefore not surprising that the lexicon of PGmc [Proto-Germanic], like that of all languages, included many words of doubtful or unknown origin (e.g., blōdaz ‘blood,’ bainan ‘bone,’ handuz ‘hand,’ regnaz ‘rain,’ stainaz ‘stone,’ godaz ‘good,’ drinkaną ‘drink,’ etc.).”
Well, yes. But what about when the mysterious words look—mysteriously—like ones in other language families? Like, say, Semitic?
For example, one of the words that does not trace back before Proto-Germanic is fright. Its spelling reflects that there was once an extra consonant sound before the final t, and its rendition in other Germanic languages often gives us a better sense of the original—such as German’s Furcht, pronounced “foorkht.” That extra consonant was the sound of ch in Bach—the Proto-Germanic form was furkhtaz.
But check this out. The Proto-Semitic verb for “to fear,” as it happens, had the consonants p-r-kh. I give no vowels because Semitic verbs are built from trios of consonants; the vowels change to mark tense and other distinctions—as in kotev/katav (“write/wrote”)—and there is no “default” vowel pattern that means nothing or signifies a basic form. Thus, the closest we can come to the word for fear in Proto-Semitic is p-r-kh.
Now, compare p-r-kh with the consonants in furkhtaz:
p — r — kh
f — r — kh — t
The f and the p don’t look related at first, but remember: in Proto-Germanic, p regularly turned into f! The p-r-kh root for "to fear" just might have also ended up as the word fright in English—and hence, right here on this page.
Or take folk. It started in Germanic as a word referring to a division of an army and only later morphed into meaning a tribe or nation. The Proto-Germanic word was fulka. The early Semitic root for “divide”—as in dividing a military unit—was p-l-kh:
p — l — kh
f — l — k
In early Semitic (e.g., Assyrian), that root was used to mean “district” (i.e., a division of land), with the kh softening into a g (puluggu). In Hebrew today, a detachment is a plaga. Maybe in Northern Europe, that root came out as fulka in the same meaning.
Maiden was, in Old English, mægden or mægþ. The same word in Old Scandinavian was magad, in Old High German magad, and in Gothic magaps. Based on these, a plausible Proto-Germanic form would be magap. Now compare this to a reconstructed early Semitic form: makhat.
Early Semitic: m — a — kh — a — t
Proto-Germanic: m — a — g — a — p
As we saw with puluggu in Assyrian, kh easily becomes g. The change from t to þ (th) is just Proto-Germanic doing its thing again.
Of course, one must be cautious about reading too much into similarities between words in different languages. As often as not, it’s just coincidence. For example, the Japanese word sagaru means “to hang down”—but that doesn’t mean Germanic-speaking Vikings made an unrecorded swing over to Japan and married a bunch of locals!
But the Semitic parallels with Proto-Germanic orphan words get more interesting when the relationships between the words are mirrored as well.
For instance, Biblical Hebrew had a root ʿ-b-r (transliterated sometimes as ʿebsr) meaning “to cross,” and that same root was used in the word for shore. Interesting that in Old English, ofer was the word for both shore and over, as in the direction you go when you cross something.
ʿebsr and ofer are more similar than they may seem at first. The ʿ at the beginning of ʿebsr is a guttural sound produced far back in the throat—similar to the kind of vocal “catch” you produce when someone says “uh-oh.” English has no letter for that sound, so we might just imagine the Biblical Hebrew word as “eber,” since in casual speech, the glottal catch often vanishes anyway.
Then the b in Hebrew was not a hard stop but more like a blowing sound—the b/v blend you often learn about in Spanish classes. It’s similar to the v in ofer. German, in fact, maintains the link between shore and over: shore is Ufer, and over is über.
Another example: Normally, Indo-European languages' word for seven includes a t. French has sept, Spanish siete, Greek hepta, Polish siedem (where d is a type of t sound). The Proto-Indo-European root was likely septm.
But not in Germanic, where we get forms like German sieben, Dutch zeven, and Danish syv. Why?
Well, Semitic languages have a word for seven that sounds similar but lacks the t. Biblical Hebrew, for instance, used šebaʿ. Once again, the b was a soft blowing sound—similar to the v in seven, or the f in Old English seofon. In Old High German, it came out as a straight b: sibun.
Easy consonant learning ^ Although imo she doesn’t accentuate the difference between adjacent consonants quite enough so if you don’t know the language, it can be hard to to tell the difference btwn j and jh in the way she’s saying it.
Okay — maybe. But what we want now is evidence that speakers of a Semitic language from way down in the Middle East actually migrated to the northern shore of Europe — namely, what is now Denmark and the northern tip of Germany, or the southern tips of Sweden and Norway right nearby.
Here, the evidence helps us only so much.
We do know which Semitic speakers are of interest: the Phoenicians, whose homeland was in today’s Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. Their language, now extinct, was especially similar to Hebrew. The Phoenicians were one of those ancient peoples seized with a desire to travel and colonize, and they did so with great diligence on both the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, taking full advantage of their advanced sailing technology. This included major colonies in North Africa, such as Carthage, as well as one as far west as Spain, in what is now called Cádiz.
The Phoenicians even rounded the bend northward up into Portugal a tad... but there, the record stops.
Did they sail up past the British Isles and around the Netherlands to reach the neck of land shared today by Denmark and Germany?
There is no record that they did so. Apparently, they were very secretive about their ship routes. Also, many of the northern European coastal regions they would have occupied have since sunk under the sea. This leaves us having to make nimble surmises.
The timing, at least, was right. The Phoenicians had reached Portugal by the 7th century B.C., and were vanquished by the Romans by about 200 B.C. This would mean that if they reached Northern Europe, it would have been around the middle of the final millennium B.C. — when we know Proto-Germanic was in place.
We do know that the technology of the time allowed people to travel from the Mediterranean all the way around to that Danish-German necklet of land, because a Greek named Pytheas recorded having done exactly that in the late 4th century B.C. We also know that the Phoenicians' technology was certainly up to the voyage — because the Vikings later sailed from Northern Europe down to Britain and France in ships much less sturdy.
Then, remember that so many of the orphan Proto-Germanic words are about sailing... and fish.
The hints get ever more tantalizing.
What’s up, for example, with the passing references to two gods, Phol and Balder, in a magical spell written in an ancient Germanic language — Old High German?
The Phoenicians’ god of gods was Baal. About which we note three things:
First, when Proto-Germanic’s sounds underwent their characteristic shifts, words that came into the language beginning with b often ended up starting with p. So, from Baal — if you see where I’m going — Paal, anyone?
Second, one thing that happened after that — when Proto-Germanic evolved into Old High German — was that p became a pf sound, written as ph. Not to give it away, but: not Paal, but Phaal.
Third, another feature of Proto-Germanic sound shifts was that long a (aa, written ā) became long o (ō). So Phaal became Phol.
Put all that together, and if you wondered what the earlier form of Phol in Old High German was — even without any Phoenician hypothesis — you'd end up tracing it backward to Baal, with a long a.
And then, the Phoenicians were also known to refer to Baal as Baal ‘Addir ("God Great" — i.e., Great God). Sometimes they wrote it as one word: Baliddir, or even in a shorter version: Baldir.
And there, in that Old High German document, is a god called Balder.
Finally, get this: not long ago, an intrepid German renegade archaeologist, trawling the shallows of the North Sea, found artifacts dating between 1500 and 500 B.C. Among them were items from Ancient Greece, from the Minoan civilization of Crete — and also, the remains of a Phoenician cooking pot!
These findings were located on the shore of Germany’s northerly Schleswig-Holstein province — precisely one of the areas where Proto-Germanic is thought to have arisen.
Theo Vennemann, of the University of Munich, puts it this way: in light of all the various indications pointing in one direction, "it would be amazing if the Phoenicians had excluded Germania from their frame of reference."
In modern times, Vennemann has been the foremost advocate of the hypothesis that Phoenician reshaped Proto-Germanic. Much of the evidence just presented — along with most of the Semitic-Germanic etymologies discussed — is his work. And I, for one, appreciate the lawyerly, fragment-based reasoning he excels at.
However, unlike in earlier chapters, this will not be the place where I muse on why linguists have not accepted Vennemann’s case outright. Part of the reason his work is rarely cited in traditional sources is that most of it is published in obscure venues and often in German. Meanwhile, the main competing theory — which proposes Semitic influence on Indo-European as a whole — appears in two magnum opuses so majestically dense that they deter all but the most committed specialists and obsessives.
But even if the Phoenician case had been presented in reader-friendly English articles in prominent journals, it would still be considered only an intriguing possibility until we have etymologies for several dozen orphan Proto-Germanic words. At present, only about fifteen such Semitic etymologies exist — and many of those are not for orphan words at all, but are merely alternative suggestions for words long thought to descend from Proto-Indo-European.
More archaeological evidence would certainly help. The fact that scholars haven’t been looking for such evidence suggests the effort could be fruitful — but it still needs to be made.
And scholars who refuse to consider the hypothesis without detailed documentation — showing exactly how many Phoenicians settled where, whether they learned Proto-Germanic, and whether they passed it down — miss a point already made in this book: in 500 B.C., no Phoenician would have conceived of writing down mundane ethnographic observations.
The linguistic data must be allowed to clinch the case — just as it does in the cases of Celtic and Viking influence on English.
But in those cases, at least, we know the relevant peoples were in England at the right time.
One broken pot does not make the case for the Phoenicians — especially when such goods could easily have been carried to northern Europe through trade, without any Phoenician ever setting foot there, let alone settling and transforming the local language.
Yet I can’t resist tossing in one more tantalizing clue.
One of the Phoenicians’ most important colonies was Carthage, in North Africa. The Carthaginians were champion travelers; as much Phoenician migration came from there as from the Middle East.
And in the Punic dialect of Phoenician, words couldn’t begin with p. Words that began with p in earlier Phoenician came, in Punic, to begin with — three guesses — f.
I wonder if anyone who reads this will find it as thrilling as I did... This is a major archaeological discovery that I had never heard of... Phoenicians in Germany?? But the proof is right there in English and German verbs that behave like Semitic verbs.
Swim becomes swam, drink becomes drank, and so on. (German has even more of these "strong verbs")
I'll admit that this is only tangentially-related to your hypothesis... but at times you seem to conflate Proto-Indo-Europeans and Semites. The Phoenicians came later....
Super-interesting article, though... You've given some things to look into. I think I'm going to get my hands on a Gimbutas book.
As you may have noticed, Gimbutas's work has been vindicated in recent years... She was "discredited" by mainstream archaeology, but David Anthony, David Graeber and David Wengrow have come to her defence in recent years.
Crow, do you know anything about the Luvians or Luwians, called Louvites by the French and Luvischen by the Germans? They seemed to have scribal schools in Kizzuwatna, Anatolia, producing myths in Hurrian, Hittite and Akkadian. They're a major suspect for who became the Levites of the Bible. I wondered if you had anymore information on them.
So you've decided to tone things down? 😂I trust you've had a wonderful birthday with your daughters.
I had an interesting conversation with my youngest son yesterday, who has recently been finding himself pulled towards Jesus and being a christian. This now means 2 of 3 sons are exploring this - which is really fascinating given they were not raised in a religious home. We talked about all kinds of religions and spirituality when they were growing up, but I never parked that discussion anywhere - outside what it means as beings with a natural desire to know ourselves more deeply.
I asked him what it was he found most attractive about it, and he said the idea that someone could embody that level of love for others. Could he do that himself, without Jesus, I then asked. He thought about it and said, yes, but Jesus must have come to show that potential.
So it's not so much about Jesus I suggested, as it was about him wanting to become more loving and Jesus is his current, most obvious reflection. He agreed, but thought too, there must be something about that particular being. For me this is where the form (Jesus) collapses into the content (love).
And this collapsing can become an obstacle, but it also may be a needed stepping-stone before self-referencing when the external anythings get dropped. As morphic fields of resonance go, Jesus is powerful (I would argue this field is its own thing and so 'real' no matter where one lands on Jesus as an historical figure) as a stepping stone to claiming love as the defining thing about humans. (It's all love, in the end.)
We're shredding a whole reality structure and religions may be the toughest for many of us. So many of the intuitive 'goods' are tangled up in them. It likely feels self-annihilating to drop them, as the detangle gets subtle.
Thanks for being such a clear, bold version of You, Tereza. You claiming you and sharing that, is an act of love. Very best wishes for the best upcoming year yet. 💕
A most excellent birthday with my daughters, thank you, Kathleen!
I can see why your son would be drawn to Christianity. I love Christians! They're a kind and supportive community where people have meaningful conversations about what's important in life. In my experience, they're nice people who care about others and use their religion as a vehicle for positive personal empowerment. It might be good for him.
Like economics, I'm less interested in taking away what we have, that's working for some people, than creating new alternatives. What concerns me is that the projection of love onto Jesus also defines what love is in reverse. Could your sons imagine you taking a whip to them because you didn't approve of them 'changing money in the temple'? Can they picture you saying that a woman doesn't deserve the food meant for sons but even dogs can eat the crumbs that drop from the table? Would you berate them that they can't do anything right when you leave and they don't perform miracles? Would you curse them and say they are no sons of yours?
By the example set by 'Jesus', your love is a weak and womanly thing, because you don't judge whether your sons are your favorite or bad and evil. You don't use violence. All those are subliminal messages from the Bible, and can be used against us anytime they want, once we accept that the God of the Bible is love. The god of the Bible is fear and favoritism, sacrifice and suffering. That's what we've been tricked into calling love.
oh my god (or rather, oh my goddess), this is such a phenomenal answer: wish I could double heart it ❤️❤️
The other thing I might add (not knowing nearly as much about the bible as you), is that when the biggest source of love in the world is projected onto Jesus, a man, and by proxy his Father / God, another male figure, we devalue women’s love and of course women’s experiences, stories, lives, voices, care. No books in the bible are written by women to my knowledge. No women’s stories, first hand, related. The subtle message is “women don’t matter.” And whatever women do, men do better (take cooking for example - male chefs; or nursing - male nurses paid more). If women can love with all their heart…men can too; only better!
I'm finding that it makes SUCH a difference thinking of God as Goddess. I was reading in the Course this morning about the gifts laid on God's altar. And I thought, no way! The Goddess doesn't have a fucking altar. She has a kitchen table where she lays out the food, day after day, with love and tenderness.
In reading When God Was a Woman last night, I was continuing to decipher the words, knowing that Hebrew is a dictation shorthand of 2-3 consonants. And I realized that the word love is the same as the Luvians or Levites who imposed this system. So when they say God is Love, they mean Luv or Lev, iow we own God, and our version of love is fear and obedience.
I have always wondered where the word “love” came from!
In Spanish the word for “to die” is morir. It’s mourir in French.
In Spanish, the word for love is amor; and it’s amour in French.
If I’m right that the a- prefix means “not” (as in typical vs atypical), then amour means “not death.”
So love is not death? Love is life? Is that why love and live sound similar in English?
I genuinely don’t know and am just hypothesising here!
Interesting hypothesis! Here's another synchronicity from the Goddess. When I'm figuring something out, a new reader might 'like' an old comment of mine that I'd forgotten. On my Doc Malik interview, someone called Fez liked one where I was saying Latin was a synthetic language and didn't derive from Sanskrit. Here's what I wrote:
"On Latin, I just looked up its relation to Sanskrit and it seems like it would have devolved, if anything. Sanskrit uses musical tonalities and the masterpiece work of its grammar was produced in 450 BCE. It's called the language of the gods for its beauty and subtlety."
So now, this has all changed meaning. 'Language of the gods' means language of god the fukker. The northern invaders brought it with them. Latin probably did derive from it, as the hexing language of the ruling caste. And all the Latin-derivatives, which kept those hexes.
I think it's more likely that 'to love' means 'to die.' It's the sacrifice demanded by 'the gods' as a proof of love.
I've been watching this on a Hebrew woman explaining why they're immortal and gods: https://youtu.be/YHpMz_PTn50. I'll post it in my next episode. So maybe Luvian, love and live are all related because they're the race of gods who never die. According to them, o' course.
Hey, you're right! I never noticed that before...
I don't think I did a good job explaining their attraction to Jesus, and they both are pretty clear on the many distortions we find in the bible. Again I see it as a stepping stone in a larger exploration, which I hope brings them both into a more direct-connect with their own divinity.
Oh more likely I didn't do a good job of reading carefully. I like that stepping stone into exploration and the direct-connect!
Just like so many other things in this world that purport to be one thing, while the truth in practice leaves such a bitter taste.
One of my favorite expressions is that we often have to find out what we are not, before we can discover what we are.
I can certainly point to that in my own life. It continued until very recently when I discovered that I was complete without needing any other identity, or outside authority.
I like your favorite expression, Philip. I relate to that too!
"Great re -Set "...nice. It reminds me of how ISIS is now associated with terrorism and violence, and GW Bush's "war on terror " pronounced like "terra".
Goddess awareness can help remind us that a conscious spirituality takes into account the feminine principle in both males and females.
And becoming aware--from the perspective of consensus duality--that we have all likely lived many, many lives as the opposite sex, just who is victim and who is perpetrator, historically speaking, can be quite a humbling experience.
C.
Yes! I can't believe it took me so long to see the connection between Set and the Great ReSet. The naming of ISIS was an obvious tell indeed. I hadn't thought about terror but I see what you mean. It has the same root as earth, ground. And there's terroir that means the distinct characteristic of a specific place, exactly what the invaders destroy.
I agree that there's a reason we all have two sides of the brain that correspond to the masculine and feminine. Where a woman becomes fundamentally different than a man is when she becomes a mother. I don't think that's just a function of reproductive organs that operate in isolation. The link between mother and child is sacred, and the religion of a conquerer doesn't recognize that.
It isn't that it's a male perspective because those settled societies that were culturally advanced were half men. It's the supremacist mindset where might makes right. They exclude women but also exclude the vast majority of men, who aren't looking to rule or be ruled, but want to raise families in peace.
Yes, agreed. In recent years I've been introducing to various clients and spiritual seekers the concept of the dominator mindset/crisis brain.
As our capacity for thought grew so did our eventual identification with form--which includes the mental " me". This egoic condition makes us over-emphasize our beliefs, our sense of separation and not enoughness. Our experience of lack, of not knowing/uncertainty, even a contrary belief from another, was/is seen as a threat to us.
Thus our egoic condition distorts our perception of self and of reality and makes us dysfunctional. This impels us to operate from the survival brain centers. During an imminent threat, domination, submission, aggression, deception, expedience, competition, rigid hierarchy etc. are invaluable survival mechanisms.
Both sexes suffer from this egoic dysfunction/survival brain dominance. (Which also engages hundreds of cognitive biases which further distorts our perception of reality and furthering the red alert retreat to to survival-threat mode.)
Of course we also have a nurturing, altruistic, empathetic, collaborative, sharing and caring side. But this side gets suppressed frequently during the day in favor of the survival centers due to the egoic condition making us feel incomplete and unsafe.
Of course we also have
Of course we are also wired
I like the unerased edits. They read like poetry, and introduce those incomplete thoughts ;-) Very astute and subtle observations. Sometimes people ask me which empire my book aims to dismantle. I answer, "First, the one in your mind."
Sorry for the unerased edits at the end....typing on a phone.
Say no more - your daughter sounds like someone I would like.
I'm thinking of making a "Fuck Israel" bumper sticker. That would really chip everyone off, and a dare to do something about it to our corrupt government.
But alas, my fighting days are over. I am content to think it every day and chuckle.
And to be clear, I don't hate Jewish people. I don't care what anyone is. I just hate Israel, and I hate our government for jamming it down our throats.
Thanks to you, we can now await the "Substack is a hotbed of Anti-semitism" headlines.
Good... I'll drink to that. That battle is looming.
As far as gods and goddesses, I believe we each have always encompassed both energies.
Gender is body form and function, nothing more.
As to God, I feel it best to resist anthropomorphism when it comes to the creator. However, based on our history of male domination, I am happy to allow the imagining of the creator as female.
Especially if it pisses off any of our institutions.
That Vold family belonging in me is difficult to ignore. Anything that challenges the status quo is right up my alley.
Haha, she would like you too. Did I mention that she's an admin at a large law firm that defends insurance companies against claimants? She had a poster of Luigi Mangione in her cubicle until HR made her take it down ;-)
She sounds like a beast - I love that lol!
Oh no! what a terrible job - completely opposite of who she wants to be. Why/how stay in such a role defending the criminal insurance industry against the people robbed and subjugated? The new feudal system is this exact thing, accomplished nowadays by technocracy, surveillance state, and strengthening the gulag slave state to finish taking and wasting earth and all resources. I couldn't do it.... work for those scumbag fukkers. I hope she gets out quick and finds something more aligned with her values.
Ha, you're reading her mind. She's been applying to others and volunteering. She did get her paralegal degree (on the clock but we'll keep that on the down low). She's in Greece right now so we'll see if any snakes lick her ears like the OG Cassandra so she can tell the future in a way that people can hear.
good news! She will do well kicking some parasites' asses! :D Ha. just finished a novel called The Moon Under Her Feet - the best thing about it is that the Magdeline had a snake that she let bite her in order for her to receive direct visions and other powers from the Mother Goddess - a direct line. So I hope a snake doesn't bite, but rather tickles, her ear.
Who wrote The Moon Under Her Feet? Love the title. Do you recommend it?
Meh. It was OK but I finished it. Started slow and slowly built the story of Jeshua but mainly it was about the Magdalenes and Priestesses. Some parts I liked; how she wove in the Inanna Descent story (one of my favorite books on the Inanna story was Descent to the Goddess) and Isis and Osiris story. It's a little too 'romance novel' for me,but I think she did a pretty good job keeping with those horrid patriarchal times. I never bought the story of Judas being the' bad guy' betrayer scapegoat, always thought there was more to that. I think the idea of the plot and how things may have gone down is plausible and believable. It would've of course been covered up so as to subjugate the people and make them fearful and obedient, which has always been my objection to that fukker Yahweh.
Clysta Kinstler is the author - written in 1989.
Happy birthday to the oh-so-smart benevolent and beautiful goddess. You already know what I think of this piece… ☀️🙏🏽💕
Thank you so much, Neshma! Looking forward to celebrating in person!
You started out subtle… lol. Can anyone expect anything less of your especially on your day of birth? I still need you to look up a picture of the Church of Set guys. Especially LeVey and Michael Aquino and his eyebrows who might require have their own satanic zip code. Good Lord…erm… Lordess? That’s a lot of religious history that I know nothing about and reading these names mentioned, that I’ve never even heard of, reminds me of how much more there is to learn… sheesh!
I like the idea of a goddess. But I don’t want to be attracted to the idea simply because I’m a broad. I connect with it because of the nurturing quality of a mother and because women tend to shun war and promote love. But innately, I feel like God(dess) is both masculine and feminine. That’s it’s incomplete if it’s only one.
I hope it was a fabulous birthday and I hope that carries through the whole year!
Woah! I didn't know that eyebrows could be rendered as horns. And Satan wanting to go back to his original name as Set--duh! How could I have missed that? Of course the Hebrew consonants are the same, of course Satan is Set!
There's so much unconscious going on. If we look at Hebrew women having to address their husbands as Lord, and then us saying 'good Lord,' it's still a form of bowing to our masters. Reading about the highly developed civilizations that were possible when war wasn't a factor makes me realize how far we have to go to take back our power--over ourselves, not others.
And yes, it's all about the nurturing quality of a mother. You can't even imagine a word like 'Lord' to be said to a mother. Right? We'd never want that. And that's an important difference. Thanks, Tonika!
Didn’t know they had to refer to their husbands as “lord”. lol. My gay friend used to always say “Lord… and Taylor” 😂 so I could never take the word seriously.
ya gotta be from back East to get that joke... I don't think they ever had them out west!
Really? I’m in the Midwest and we have them here too.
“I say ‘Death to god the fukker.’”
lol lol nearly spilled my coffee reading this
“Only mother fukkers see women as sex slaves” lol lol lol
“And now, in a final frenzy of destruction, they are trying to bring the return of the psychopath Set in the Great Re-Set.”
>>Nice 😊
Good you didn't have a machine gun around when you first read:
‘The mind of woman brooks not discipline. Her intellect has little weight.’
Hahaha! You already had an affinity with my youngest, but I knew her Fuck Israel sticker would endear her further.
of course it would :-)
You definitely brought them up to be outside the herd... not an easy task!
.
Tereza
Where you see rebellion against a rapist god, I see windmill jousting.
I don't know whether or not the last Christian died on the cross. I don't know whether there is even any truth to the poorly translated ancient tabloid journalism some people call the word of God.
The gift we are:
I have faith that in each human there is a sacred potential for goodness.
I have hope as I imagine future possibilities of flourishing goodness.
I have love as I extend my best wishes toward everyone and remind myself that loving kindness enriches me and costs nothing.
I am heartened by the biblical mythos, even when mixed with confusing "telephone games" and bad translation, that indicates we each might be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, that we each are a gift.
I'd say my life is a gift and I realize I am humanity and I have faith and hope and love. I'd agree with St. Paul that we remain with faith, hope, and love, and that the greatest and most important of these is love.
Love?
Shall we "make love" or "love the one we're with" or ritualize tribal fellowship?
What love?
Not erotic love. Not filial brothetly love. Rather agape, love of caring, empathy, right relation, appreciation, respect, and self-reliant principled character.
This is just me, doing the best I can using words while trying to talk about things that are obviously beyond words, applying my small heart, my smaller brain, and my over-confident ego, such as they are.
What do I know? Nothing really. This is just my best guess so far.
Thoughts?
mark spark
.
For your amazing daughter
• Evil Against Integrity - 04/28/25 – Max Igan )Crowhouse)
https://www.bitchute.com/video/imynFYIH6D5J/
or
https://rumble.com/v6sohbz-evil-against-integrity.html
or
https://odysee.com/@thecrowhouse:2/Evil-Against-Integrity:4
I watched the beginning of Max Igan's Evil Against Integrity, where he shows the clip of the Bernie Sanders rally and the police tug away the Free Palestine banner from the woman. At first I thought the crowd, when they notice, were booing her. And then I realize they're booing the police. And when the whole crowd lifts up their fists and starts chanting Free Palestine, I just started sobbing. It was such a relief to see so many sane people in one place. I'll definitely send this to Cassandra. It will be heartening to her. Thanks, Julius.
Happy birthday,Tereza.
As it so happens, I married a Goddess, so I guess that’s a tick for polytheism.
Oh, and in passing, Catchadragon (Gerard) mentioned you without actually mentioning you …
• Behind the Veil of History - Catchadragon
• Lets look at that again ! How history was used to 'FRAME YOUR MIND'
https://catchadragon.substack.com/p/behind-the-veil-of-history
Lucky you! And lucky Goddess!
Thanks for letting me know that Catchadragon is Gerard. He's been so appreciative of my recent pieces that I wondered if I had the gender right. I'll read his piece later today, when I have a chance to catch up with Catcha ;-)
In 2012 I also married someone I thought was a goddess, but she turned out to be Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, so I had to leave in 2020.
Ha-ha! 😊 I am coming up to 50 years. Goddesses can be fierce and demanding … (and irrationally left-brained) at times …
Wow, 50 years. Congratulations.
Loving this! More like a 10,000 yr psy-op! But it's Time. Listening now and look forward to reading the comment section. :D
Yay! Did you come here because of my latest, where I respond to these comments? Love the caps on Time. It certainly Is.
no, not yet... trying to catch up so i can then read your response to the comments! :)
Right on Sister🥰😘💃🏼
Belated happy solar return Tereza! You had me at the first paragraph.
I thought of you with this one, Isaac. I felt that it would be up your alley. You inspire both my cursing and my conviction too ;-)
🥰
I loved that post on Myth of The Terrible Mother. I actually didn't know anything about the origin of that myth, so thanks for that addition to my theological discourse! Remember, I'm a Roman Catholic theologian! You already know I believe that "god," the creator had to be female.
I've also have done more than 30 years of research on two different but not totally unrelated topics. 1) the Anunnaki, and 2) who and what was Jesus. I'll briefly explain #2. Jesus spent those "lost years" from birth to age 30 in India to escape Herod's demand that all male children on 2 years of age were to be executed. The three wise men from the East, we traders, and probably took him and at least his mother to India to escape.
The gospel stories pick up when at the age of 30, Jesus reappears and begins teaching. Fast forward to the crucifixion. From incredible, ancient scrolls kept in a monastery high up in the mountains of India, there is documentation about Isis (Jesus) and what he was doing in India during those lost years, AND after he supposedly died on the cross.
It seems that he achieved the highest level of Yogis, who had special powers to heal, levitate, and translocate! He learned and practiced Buddhism, which promoted an ideal way of living in relation to others. This is what he was teaching when he returned at the age of 30.
Now, he did not actually "die" on the cross, but achieved the highest level of consciousness to withstand death. The women who anointed his body were actually healing him and bring him back from apparent death. Those appearances to his disciples after the "resurrection" were his ability to translocate, appear and disappear. Why? To avoid further persecution. Freaky, huh?
The "ascension in to heaven," was really Isis returning to India where he and the Apostle Thomas continued to teach and practice these highest levels of consciousness. When Isis actually died, Thomas continued teaching until he died. There is no record of Isis' burial place, but there is a place where his Mother Mary is buried.
In actual fact, there is nothing about Jesus forming a "church," only that he sent his followers out to spread his teachings! The gospels were oral tradition for at least 60 years after Jesus supposedly died, and there were many of those oral stories that never made it into the "official" cannons of the NT!
The whole lie/myth began with the Council of Nicaea in 325 when Emperor of Rome, Constantine, commandeered the first "doctrines" of the approved "church of Jesus Christ." There are many who believe this was when the "Holy Roman Catholic Church" was created and the whole story made up to fit the political narrative Constantine wanted and need to consolidate his power.
Aquinas and others then crystalized these doctrines about the immaculate conception, virgin birth, the trinity, the transfiguration, the Eucharist, etc etc etc. Subsequent councils defined all of the other dogmas, including the infallibility of the popes. All MAN made bullshit.
There's obviously a whole lot more about what came before Jesus appeared on the scene, and how all of this bullshit was created.
I do believe Jesus was a historical figure and that he was a radical reformer who was killed because he was a threat to the Jewish status quo. Personally, I believe in the Radical Jesus and the simple message he taught about love. Those who lived that message, lived in the spirit of the creator and would achieve the fullest of what it means to be created "in the image" of the creator. All of your research about the Mother makes sense with all of this.
Make sense? There is so much more about the Anunnaki for another time, but they predate the Jewish Old Testament, by tens of thousands of years, going back to the clay tablets of the Sumerians and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The ancient kings and queens, the giants, and the Nephilim of the OT were really descendants of the original Anunnaki. This stuff turns everything we have ever learned upside down.
Thank you for posting your comment here, Regis! I'm happy to have your deep knowledge of 30 yrs of research on the Annunaki and Jesus. The revelation that I had, when you emailed this to me, is that Jesus is Isis writ Male--which will be the title of another piece. I have been puzzling and puzzling over where the name Jesus came from and what it means, since we know there's no J in Aramaic and without the vowels it's just s-s. Yes! Yes! Is-is!
I realize this isn't exactly a revelation since you told me as much, but I take a different meaning from it. All the Hebrew names are ways of usurping the gods. Israel is IsisRaEl. And we know that the J is an I in ioudaios: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/what-is-a-jew? So the translation of Jesus into Isis is obvious, once you see it.
I see it as another attempt to usurp the Goddess, as Merlin Stone points out for others.
I'm about 5 yrs behind you with 25 yrs of researching scriptures, although for 10 of those I switched my focus to economics. The birth narrative of Jesus doesn't fit the history. When the census was being done for taxation, it was under the Roman proctorate. Herod the Great had died and his son Herod Antipas wasn't yet in charge. So he couldn't have declared the death of the first born sons.
The most important question is the one you ask--what side was Jesus on? The Judeans were revolting against Rome under the zealots and Sadducees. Was he with the rebellion or a collaborator with Rome and the high priests? These are two that come to my answers: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/jesus-rebel-or-imperialist and https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/jesus-is-the-og-psy-ops.
I look forward to the continued conversation, Regis! Thanks for bringing your thoughtful analysis to my stack.
And a belated happy birthday from me, must be great to be 35 years old!! 😊 🎉 And yes to Year of the Goddess!!
I wonder if you’re familiar with the work of eco-philosopher Valerie Plumwood? She wrote a superb book called “Feminism and the Mastery of Nature” which you might enjoy.
https://takku.net/mediagallery/mediaobjects/orig/f/f_val-plumwood-feminism-and-the-mastery-of-nature-pdf.pdf
Like you, she’s big on logic, throwing light on how Greek philosophy has ruined society (lol), and is an anarchist who is neither keen on the denial of difference (“we are all one” / deep ecology’s erasure and obliteration of boundaries) and not keen on dualism, ie the rigid adherence to hierarchical differences that are marked by relations of power, subjugation, homogenisation, backgrounding, radical exclusion, incorporation and denial of dependency and relationship.
Thank you, LoWa! BTW, I meant to say in reply to your comment above that Neshma, who's on the thread as Sane Franciscan, shares your heritage. She has a video series on Beige with some great plays on the word that I can't remember now.
Valerie Plumwood sounds fascinating! I have so many great recommendations from you. The Creation of Patriarchy and Krivda: the Godtrix against the Matrix are setting on my shelf now. I also have a sci fi fantasy I picked up called Godkiller. The name has been occurring to me as I wrote this episode.
Your like my Lovely mother! She is 64 and looks like 30. Same goes to you! And a happy birthday. You taurus too? Mine is in 8 days. Taurus taurus go taurus! Ba’Al fitting graciously!
Couldnt stop thinking of tim munchin song préjudice when reading your article.
I feel ashame of my sex, to make woman feels like objects…. But f*kk i like b** bs🤣😂😅😉
Happy birthday to you and god your book is great! Aint over yet but i have few spare time lately. When done ill write you back
🎉🎉🎉🍾🥳🎂🎉🎉🎉
Haha! I don't think it's objectifying women if you like boobs AND brains ;-) You're not like Indra saying 'The mind of woman brooks not discipline. Her intellect has little weight.'
And proof of that is that you say 'god your book is great!' although I must correct that to 'goddess your book is great!'
Thank you for the compliment, happy to be in good company with your lovely mother. You look much older in your thumbnail!
A technical point: The claim that Indo-Aryans were ‘big sailors who navigated the rivers and coastlines of Europe and the Near East' is not well-supported by archaeological or linguistic evidence.
I'm making my way through David Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel, and Language (which is brilliant, but incredibly dense), and the Proto-Indo-Europeans (of whom the Indo-Aryans are a branch) were not seafarers. They were charioteers who conquered much of the world through the combination of several technological innovations, such as the domestication of the horse, the wheel, the chariot, and metallurgy (specifically bronze-working). They also likely a clan-based feast system through which they extended their culture by incorporating local chieftains of various ethnicities and languages.
If you look at the linguistic evidence, you will see that many sea-faring terms in Indo-European languages come from Semitic, not P.I.E. roots. This suggests that they were borrowed into Indo-European languages, probably from Phoenician.
I agree with the Gimbutas/Stone premise that Aryan invaders with a strongly patriarchal culture overran the more matriarchal cultures of Old Europe, but I think that Stone and others like her sometimes twist the facts to fit their narrative.
Thank you, Crow, for geeking out in my comments. I learn so much when you do! I looked up the whole quote on the 'big sailors' and, in fairness to Stone, it says, "their earlier more speculative appearances in prehistoric times as big sailors ..." I know there are many theories about the Phoenicians as the source of imperialism or rule by foreigners, but I haven't found the evidence compelling.
Here's the takeaway from Merlin's research for me: 1) settled indigenous cultures with advanced skills in agriculture and writing had supreme female deities and corresponding matrifocal societies and horizontal structures that went back to 9000 BCE. 2) male deities were imposed by northern invaders led by a priestly caste of Indo-Europeans who may be the Levites or Luvians. 3) under the priests were the aristocratic charioteers known by the Indo-European name maryannu 4) you bring up the metallurgy needed for coinage, which might be the Kennites or Biblical descendants of Cain, also needed for imperialism 5) the ordinary thugs or terrorists were a different race of Habiru or Semitics, recruited among itinerant shepherds turned into terrorists.
So to answer whether the invaders were PIE or Semitic, the answer may be both. But the rulers and priesthood, killers of God the Mother, were Indo-European from the evidence.
I appreciate your thanks... I thought maybe I was spamming you... but it's not often I get a chance to share the obscure linguistic knowledge I've acquired in the last year.
I think the invaders of Old Europe (and India) were Proto-Indo-European/Aryan... but there were equally objectionable & patriarchal religions in the Middle East. I don't think it boils down to a single root culture being responsible for all the world's evil.
I think that you and I both identify as anarchists, is that correct? So finding where and how the concept of rule over others, iow empire, became legitimized is key. No, of course, the vast majority of Indo-Iranian-European Aryans stayed put. And their deities may have also been female-personified--I know Frances Leader has written about that for the Celts.
The technique combined the threat of violence, the bribe to the existing rulers of coinage and taxation, and the appeal to the egos of men for supremacy over women. They also provided their women to men of the ruling caste to infiltrate and control them.
The Levites introduced the concept of evil as the nature of humans, original sin. And particularly the nature of women. If you can find an earlier source of this ideology, please provide it. Before they mythologized the idea that one man was divinely appointed to rule over others, a person who desired that was seen as sick. At least that's my understanding of the indigenous american concept of wetiko.
I for one would love to know if anyone finds definitive evidence either way on this!!
As an Indian, I grew up with stories of the “Aryan invasion” and thought this was the basis of colourism in India. I’m dark skinned like my dad (but other half of my family - mother and sister - super fair skinned, can easily pass as white). And as one of the only two brown girls in my class in India (punjab), I really felt it!!
But I have been recently binge-listening to a podcast called EMPIRE by Anita Anand and William Darymple (are you familiar with this one, Tereza?) to learn more about Indian history (British empire) and the history of lots of other empires and I heard a offhand comment that the Aryan invasion story wasn’t legit so I’m intrigued in learning more. It was in the context of another historical conversation and they didn’t elaborate on it further in the podcast.
William Dalrymple was who I learned about the East India Company from, that I wrote about in Ch. 6: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/06-slavery-in-place. He's amazing!
I'm still trying to get the chronology straight in my head. The Heka Khasut ruled Egypt from 1638-1530 BCE. The Habiru were terrorizing Egyptian towns in the 14th c BCE. But the northern invaders to Egypt go back to 3000 BCE according to Stone.
Doesn't the Indo in Indo-European refer to Indian? I've been wondering how the Indo-Europeans could invade India? And I'm not clear exactly who the Aryans are, although it seems like Iranian has derived from it, although they wouldn't have been indigenous, right?
Crow, you are a wealth of good information!
Indian was invaded by Proto-Indo-Europeans, meaning that they came before both Indians and Europeans...
They came from the Caspian steppes in what is not
The word Aryan was used to refer to the ethnolinguistic group now called "Proto-Indo-Europeans" up until the end of WWII... If you read an older linguistic book like The Loom of Language, the term Aryan is clearly used in that way.
After the Nazis, the term Aryan acquired negative connotations and most people today think Aryans were a product of Nazi propaganda.
The term Aryan is still used in the academic literature but it is used in a much narrower sense, to refer to one branch of the Proto-Indo-European tree.
David W. Anthony explains how assumptions about the racial characteristics of the speakers of an extinct language have led to enduring confusion about the word Aryan.
Proto-Indo-European, the linguistic problem, became “the Proto-Indo-Europeans,” a biological population with its own mentality and personality: “a slim, tall, light-complexioned, blonde race, superior to all other peoples, calm and firm in character, constantly striving, intellectually
brilliant, with an almost ideal attitude towards the world and life in general”.
The name Aryan began to be applied to them, because the authors
of the oldest religious texts in Sanskrit and Persian, the Rig Veda and
Avesta, called themselves Aryans. These Aryans lived in Iran and eastward into Afghanistan—Pakistan—India. The term Aryan should be confined only to this Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family.
But the Vedas were a newly discovered source of mystical fascination in the
nineteenth century, and in Victorian parlors the name Aryan soon spread
beyond its proper linguistic and geographic confines. Madison Grant's The
Passing of the Great Race (1916), a best-seller in the U.S., was a virulent
warning against the thinning of superior American “Aryan” blood (by
which he meant the British—Scots—Irish-German settlers of the original
thirteen colonies) through interbreeding with immigrant “inferior races,”
which for him included Poles, Czechs, and Italians as well as Jews—all of
whom spoke Indo-European languages (Yiddish is a Germanic language
in its basic grammar and morphology).°
Oh yes I’m still working my way through your book chapters you’ve been generous to record! This one looks fab.
I started reading Darymple’s book “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed The World” and I couldn’t believe how much trade there was between India and Rome back in the day! Some documents suggest as much as a third of the Roman Empire revenue could’ve come from customs duties paid by Indians in their imports…and India was termed the sink of all the world’s gold as we sold lots of things (spices, ivory, perfumes etc) for gold and silver coins…
One thing that I did grumble a bit about was all these rich Indian dudes founding new religions. Buddhism was founded by an elite prince who had never seen suffering and left his wife and kid to go “find himself”, giving away his possessions but knew he could run back to his king daddy anytime? He basically just ghosted his wife…Buddhism appealed to merchant classes (their wealth taken as a sign of good karma) and unlike Hindus who were technically forbidden from travelling by sea or interacting with foreigners, Buddhism was closely linked to trade by sea and wealth of Buddhist monasteries grew as a result (even charging interest in loans…). Buddhism really took off when Chandragupta sided with Alexander the Great in his last great battle in India and then became the leader of a new empire; later the grandson of Chandragupta, Ashoka, went on a empire building spree, resulting in terrible carnage and destruction and suddenly became enlightened by Buddhism and started spreading it around his empire.
And Jainism was also founded by a disillusioned Indian aristocrat.
Urgh sad to see all the rich and powerful empire building men dictating the religions! And how money, politics, religion and patriarchy have been so interwoven in India..Anyway this is a bit of a side rant based on the Darymple readings that I thought you might appreciate based on our interest in empire, money, religion and patriarchy ha.
I was interested in ancient India’s links to the rest of the world so have just picked up a book called an “African History of Africa” by Zeinab Badawi with a ton of African scholarly sources and “Land Between two rivers: A 5000 Year History of Iraq” by Bartle Bull. Will keep you posted if I find any clues there!
There are also people in India who consider themselves indigenous so some of this may be in their ancient stories. Will check with some relatives on this who’ve studied the topic including learning more about Adivasis (tribal peoples; some first tribes who had more pagan / animist spirituality and didn’t do idol worship nor believe in reincarnation) — some of their pagan beliefs of course became incorporated into the more dominant religions - Vedas, Hinduism etc as well as related practices like Ayurveda.
If there are indigenous peoples in India then I for one would very much like to know where my ancestors came from!
I think that current scholarly consensus holds that the Proto-Indo-European speakers (PIE), or more specifically the Indo-Aryans, migrated into and conquered the northern parts of India sometime during the 2nd millennium BCE. This is supported by linguistic & archaeological evidence, although the exact nature of the "conquest" (violent invasion vs. gradual migration and assimilation) is still debated. The Aryans must have had a political system that assimilated collaborators in the areas they conquered; otherwise they wouldn't have had the numbers to conquer so much of the world. It is plausible that this involved a kind of aristocracy that local chieftains could join. Possibly, religious conversion was a necessary step to joining this elite.
India today is famous for its extraordinary linguistic diversity, but in very broad terms, the country’s languages divide into two major families:
In the north, the dominant languages belong to the Indo-European family (such as Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, and Marathi), which descend from the Indo-Aryan branch of PIE.
In the south, the largest language family is the Dravidian family, which includes major languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam.
If we're looking for an example of a peaceful civilization prior to Indo-Aryan arrival, the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) is particularly fascinating. Flourishing between roughly 2600 and 1900 BCE, the IVC is characterized by a lack of clear evidence for warfare or social hierarchy (such as palaces, large temples, or mass graves)
Because of this, some scholars (more speculative and on the fringe) have even romanticized it as a sort of “egalitarian” or “proto-communist utopia,” though mainstream archaeology is more cautious with such labels.
So although this is a pretty superficial analysis - I don't much about the Indus Valley Civilization - Tereza's theory does seem to hold up in its claim that the Aryan invaders were more violent and patriarchal than the people they conquered & displaced.
Thanks, very helpful! Any good book recommendations on this?
You're absolutely right... I've been on the case on trying to figure out the rise of statecraft for years now... It's a very deep rabbit hole. It would be convenient if statecraft only arose in one place, but that does not appear to be the case. Statecraft very probably has different origins in Mesopotamia, China, Mesoamerica, etc...
I think James C. Scott has done some of the most valuable work in his amazing book Against the Grain, which shows that all early states were grain states. This is key - it suggests that in order to control an entire population, you have to control their food supply.
I think you'll get a lot out of this: https://nevermoremedia.substack.com/p/how-beer-enslaved-the-world?utm_source=publication-search
Very funny quote and your response here: “Are we to believe that the foundations of Western Civilization were laid by an ill-fed people living in perpetual state of partial intoxication?”
Um… was that supposed to be a rhetorical question?
I think this parallels nicely with my analysis of the Joseph story in Genesis, when the people trade their livestock, land and lives for grain. It wasn't just a story, it was allegory: 16 And Joseph said to them, Bring your cattle, and I will give you bread for your cattle, if your money is spent. 17 And they brought their cattle to Joseph; and Joseph gave them bread in return for their horses, and for their sheep, and for their oxen, and for their asses; and Joseph maintained them with bread for all their cattle in that year. https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/hebrews-in-egypt-slaves-or-masters
Why didn't they eat the cattle instead of trading it for bread? As you say, it made it possible to tax them, as the archons did in Greece with barley before the invention of coinage. All the same people, the same bloodline, I suspect.
Another classic anarchist study of the rise of statecraft is Fredy Perlman's Against His-Story, Against Leviathan. It's available for free on Youtube. It's a mindbender.
Okay, I'm going to geek out a bit here, because I take a serious interest in historical linguistics and most people have no idea about the Semitic influence on Proto-Germanic.
This is from John McWhorter's book Our Marvellous Bastard Tongue:
Proto-Germanic Was Full of Orphan Words
A final and conclusive piece of evidence that there were, at the very least, some people of some kind stirring things up is that no less than a third of the Proto-Germanic vocabulary does not trace back to Proto-Indo-European.
With the other two-thirds, we can first figure out what the Proto-Germanic word was—like daukhtrd for daughter—and then compare that word to daughter words in the other Indo-European subfamilies, eventually working out that the Proto-Indo-European root was dhugh₂tér.
But with a mysterious many of the Proto-Germanic words, we just hit a wall. There are no cognates of these words in other Indo-European languages, and thus no ancestral Proto-Indo-European root can be reconstructed. Earlier than Proto-Germanic, the trail runs cold. These words often refer to seafaring (sea, ship, strand, sail), warmaking (sword), fish (carp, eel), and formal social institutions (knight).
Note, for example, that there is no word akin to sea in any other European language you might be familiar with. In the Romance languages, we have French mer and Italian mare. In the Slavic languages, Russian has more, Polish morze. Over in Celtic, Welsh uses môr. From the shape of all those words, it’s no surprise that Proto-Indo-European is thought to have had a word like mere, referring to something like a lake.
But in English we instead have this sea thing, with cognates like German See and Dutch zee. Why don’t we English speakers refer to eating something like “mar-food” instead of seafood? Sure, Germans also have Meer as an alternate. But where did See come from?
Now, one way of approaching this is to just treat it as an accident. Who knows, after all, whether in other Indo-European languages, words related to these seemingly orphan ones in Proto-Germanic once existed but dropped out of use by chance? Maybe it just so happened that a Proto-Indo-European root survives only in one of the many branches of the family. Although we would have to wonder why it would have disappeared in so many branches so uniformly—but still.
Or, the meanings of words can change so much over time that a Proto-Germanic word might trace back to a Proto-Indo-European root with a completely different meaning—so different that no one would suspect the connection.
For example, the word punch, when referring to a drink, comes not from a Proto-Indo-European word for liquid, but from its word for five—via the Hindi word for five, because the original recipe was developed in India and used five ingredients. Shitte happens.
And besides, when scholars put their heads together, they can often figure out a Proto-Indo-European root that the Proto-Germanic word could have come from, via resemblances that no one happened to notice before.
So, one leading scholar of how languages change has only this to say about the issue in a recent work:
“Shifts in the meanings of words and the replacement of old lexemes by new ones are universal types of language change; it is therefore not surprising that the lexicon of PGmc [Proto-Germanic], like that of all languages, included many words of doubtful or unknown origin (e.g., blōdaz ‘blood,’ bainan ‘bone,’ handuz ‘hand,’ regnaz ‘rain,’ stainaz ‘stone,’ godaz ‘good,’ drinkaną ‘drink,’ etc.).”
Well, yes. But what about when the mysterious words look—mysteriously—like ones in other language families? Like, say, Semitic?
For example, one of the words that does not trace back before Proto-Germanic is fright. Its spelling reflects that there was once an extra consonant sound before the final t, and its rendition in other Germanic languages often gives us a better sense of the original—such as German’s Furcht, pronounced “foorkht.” That extra consonant was the sound of ch in Bach—the Proto-Germanic form was furkhtaz.
But check this out. The Proto-Semitic verb for “to fear,” as it happens, had the consonants p-r-kh. I give no vowels because Semitic verbs are built from trios of consonants; the vowels change to mark tense and other distinctions—as in kotev/katav (“write/wrote”)—and there is no “default” vowel pattern that means nothing or signifies a basic form. Thus, the closest we can come to the word for fear in Proto-Semitic is p-r-kh.
Now, compare p-r-kh with the consonants in furkhtaz:
p — r — kh
f — r — kh — t
The f and the p don’t look related at first, but remember: in Proto-Germanic, p regularly turned into f! The p-r-kh root for "to fear" just might have also ended up as the word fright in English—and hence, right here on this page.
Or take folk. It started in Germanic as a word referring to a division of an army and only later morphed into meaning a tribe or nation. The Proto-Germanic word was fulka. The early Semitic root for “divide”—as in dividing a military unit—was p-l-kh:
p — l — kh
f — l — k
In early Semitic (e.g., Assyrian), that root was used to mean “district” (i.e., a division of land), with the kh softening into a g (puluggu). In Hebrew today, a detachment is a plaga. Maybe in Northern Europe, that root came out as fulka in the same meaning.
Maiden was, in Old English, mægden or mægþ. The same word in Old Scandinavian was magad, in Old High German magad, and in Gothic magaps. Based on these, a plausible Proto-Germanic form would be magap. Now compare this to a reconstructed early Semitic form: makhat.
Early Semitic: m — a — kh — a — t
Proto-Germanic: m — a — g — a — p
As we saw with puluggu in Assyrian, kh easily becomes g. The change from t to þ (th) is just Proto-Germanic doing its thing again.
Of course, one must be cautious about reading too much into similarities between words in different languages. As often as not, it’s just coincidence. For example, the Japanese word sagaru means “to hang down”—but that doesn’t mean Germanic-speaking Vikings made an unrecorded swing over to Japan and married a bunch of locals!
But the Semitic parallels with Proto-Germanic orphan words get more interesting when the relationships between the words are mirrored as well.
For instance, Biblical Hebrew had a root ʿ-b-r (transliterated sometimes as ʿebsr) meaning “to cross,” and that same root was used in the word for shore. Interesting that in Old English, ofer was the word for both shore and over, as in the direction you go when you cross something.
ʿebsr and ofer are more similar than they may seem at first. The ʿ at the beginning of ʿebsr is a guttural sound produced far back in the throat—similar to the kind of vocal “catch” you produce when someone says “uh-oh.” English has no letter for that sound, so we might just imagine the Biblical Hebrew word as “eber,” since in casual speech, the glottal catch often vanishes anyway.
Then the b in Hebrew was not a hard stop but more like a blowing sound—the b/v blend you often learn about in Spanish classes. It’s similar to the v in ofer. German, in fact, maintains the link between shore and over: shore is Ufer, and over is über.
Another example: Normally, Indo-European languages' word for seven includes a t. French has sept, Spanish siete, Greek hepta, Polish siedem (where d is a type of t sound). The Proto-Indo-European root was likely septm.
But not in Germanic, where we get forms like German sieben, Dutch zeven, and Danish syv. Why?
Well, Semitic languages have a word for seven that sounds similar but lacks the t. Biblical Hebrew, for instance, used šebaʿ. Once again, the b was a soft blowing sound—similar to the v in seven, or the f in Old English seofon. In Old High German, it came out as a straight b: sibun.
Super interesting!
A couple of additions: “sea” in Hindi is “samunder” (not sure how to write in English script lol).
Also all the similar consonant sounds you mention make complete sense to me as they literally follow each other in the Hindi alphabet.
K Kh G Gh
Ch Chh J Jh
T Th D Dh
P F B Bh M
Some of these sounds don’t exist in English, but you get the idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I7iUUp-cX8&pp=ygUdSGluZGkgY29uc29uYW50IHByb251bmNpYXRpb24%3D
Easy consonant learning ^ Although imo she doesn’t accentuate the difference between adjacent consonants quite enough so if you don’t know the language, it can be hard to to tell the difference btwn j and jh in the way she’s saying it.
Phinding the Phoenicians
Okay — maybe. But what we want now is evidence that speakers of a Semitic language from way down in the Middle East actually migrated to the northern shore of Europe — namely, what is now Denmark and the northern tip of Germany, or the southern tips of Sweden and Norway right nearby.
Here, the evidence helps us only so much.
We do know which Semitic speakers are of interest: the Phoenicians, whose homeland was in today’s Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. Their language, now extinct, was especially similar to Hebrew. The Phoenicians were one of those ancient peoples seized with a desire to travel and colonize, and they did so with great diligence on both the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, taking full advantage of their advanced sailing technology. This included major colonies in North Africa, such as Carthage, as well as one as far west as Spain, in what is now called Cádiz.
The Phoenicians even rounded the bend northward up into Portugal a tad... but there, the record stops.
Did they sail up past the British Isles and around the Netherlands to reach the neck of land shared today by Denmark and Germany?
There is no record that they did so. Apparently, they were very secretive about their ship routes. Also, many of the northern European coastal regions they would have occupied have since sunk under the sea. This leaves us having to make nimble surmises.
The timing, at least, was right. The Phoenicians had reached Portugal by the 7th century B.C., and were vanquished by the Romans by about 200 B.C. This would mean that if they reached Northern Europe, it would have been around the middle of the final millennium B.C. — when we know Proto-Germanic was in place.
We do know that the technology of the time allowed people to travel from the Mediterranean all the way around to that Danish-German necklet of land, because a Greek named Pytheas recorded having done exactly that in the late 4th century B.C. We also know that the Phoenicians' technology was certainly up to the voyage — because the Vikings later sailed from Northern Europe down to Britain and France in ships much less sturdy.
Then, remember that so many of the orphan Proto-Germanic words are about sailing... and fish.
The hints get ever more tantalizing.
What’s up, for example, with the passing references to two gods, Phol and Balder, in a magical spell written in an ancient Germanic language — Old High German?
The Phoenicians’ god of gods was Baal. About which we note three things:
First, when Proto-Germanic’s sounds underwent their characteristic shifts, words that came into the language beginning with b often ended up starting with p. So, from Baal — if you see where I’m going — Paal, anyone?
Second, one thing that happened after that — when Proto-Germanic evolved into Old High German — was that p became a pf sound, written as ph. Not to give it away, but: not Paal, but Phaal.
Third, another feature of Proto-Germanic sound shifts was that long a (aa, written ā) became long o (ō). So Phaal became Phol.
Put all that together, and if you wondered what the earlier form of Phol in Old High German was — even without any Phoenician hypothesis — you'd end up tracing it backward to Baal, with a long a.
And then, the Phoenicians were also known to refer to Baal as Baal ‘Addir ("God Great" — i.e., Great God). Sometimes they wrote it as one word: Baliddir, or even in a shorter version: Baldir.
And there, in that Old High German document, is a god called Balder.
Finally, get this: not long ago, an intrepid German renegade archaeologist, trawling the shallows of the North Sea, found artifacts dating between 1500 and 500 B.C. Among them were items from Ancient Greece, from the Minoan civilization of Crete — and also, the remains of a Phoenician cooking pot!
These findings were located on the shore of Germany’s northerly Schleswig-Holstein province — precisely one of the areas where Proto-Germanic is thought to have arisen.
Theo Vennemann, of the University of Munich, puts it this way: in light of all the various indications pointing in one direction, "it would be amazing if the Phoenicians had excluded Germania from their frame of reference."
In modern times, Vennemann has been the foremost advocate of the hypothesis that Phoenician reshaped Proto-Germanic. Much of the evidence just presented — along with most of the Semitic-Germanic etymologies discussed — is his work. And I, for one, appreciate the lawyerly, fragment-based reasoning he excels at.
However, unlike in earlier chapters, this will not be the place where I muse on why linguists have not accepted Vennemann’s case outright. Part of the reason his work is rarely cited in traditional sources is that most of it is published in obscure venues and often in German. Meanwhile, the main competing theory — which proposes Semitic influence on Indo-European as a whole — appears in two magnum opuses so majestically dense that they deter all but the most committed specialists and obsessives.
But even if the Phoenician case had been presented in reader-friendly English articles in prominent journals, it would still be considered only an intriguing possibility until we have etymologies for several dozen orphan Proto-Germanic words. At present, only about fifteen such Semitic etymologies exist — and many of those are not for orphan words at all, but are merely alternative suggestions for words long thought to descend from Proto-Indo-European.
More archaeological evidence would certainly help. The fact that scholars haven’t been looking for such evidence suggests the effort could be fruitful — but it still needs to be made.
And scholars who refuse to consider the hypothesis without detailed documentation — showing exactly how many Phoenicians settled where, whether they learned Proto-Germanic, and whether they passed it down — miss a point already made in this book: in 500 B.C., no Phoenician would have conceived of writing down mundane ethnographic observations.
The linguistic data must be allowed to clinch the case — just as it does in the cases of Celtic and Viking influence on English.
But in those cases, at least, we know the relevant peoples were in England at the right time.
One broken pot does not make the case for the Phoenicians — especially when such goods could easily have been carried to northern Europe through trade, without any Phoenician ever setting foot there, let alone settling and transforming the local language.
Yet I can’t resist tossing in one more tantalizing clue.
One of the Phoenicians’ most important colonies was Carthage, in North Africa. The Carthaginians were champion travelers; as much Phoenician migration came from there as from the Middle East.
And in the Punic dialect of Phoenician, words couldn’t begin with p. Words that began with p in earlier Phoenician came, in Punic, to begin with — three guesses — f.
Fopcorn in Tunisia!
I wonder if anyone who reads this will find it as thrilling as I did... This is a major archaeological discovery that I had never heard of... Phoenicians in Germany?? But the proof is right there in English and German verbs that behave like Semitic verbs.
Swim becomes swam, drink becomes drank, and so on. (German has even more of these "strong verbs")
I'll admit that this is only tangentially-related to your hypothesis... but at times you seem to conflate Proto-Indo-Europeans and Semites. The Phoenicians came later....
Super-interesting article, though... You've given some things to look into. I think I'm going to get my hands on a Gimbutas book.
As you may have noticed, Gimbutas's work has been vindicated in recent years... She was "discredited" by mainstream archaeology, but David Anthony, David Graeber and David Wengrow have come to her defence in recent years.
Seems like her work has stood the test of time...
Crow, do you know anything about the Luvians or Luwians, called Louvites by the French and Luvischen by the Germans? They seemed to have scribal schools in Kizzuwatna, Anatolia, producing myths in Hurrian, Hittite and Akkadian. They're a major suspect for who became the Levites of the Bible. I wondered if you had anymore information on them.
Nope! Never heard of them!