Forgotten
The weekend brought an awakening of demons. Down they swooped upon an unsuspecting population of people having a fun time at a festival. All through the area, grandmas to grandchildren, were caught off guard when the earth opened up to let fire breathing monsters out to kill, to maim, to sweep them away from their loved ones.
Like monsters anywhere, they think what they do is righteous. They are privileged by their gods and leaders to strike out against people who have hurt no one.
The Gnostics call them archons. Such monsters are the foot soldiers of blood thirsty, and dark gods.
Once upon a time, when time was not yet recorded, such gods demanded humans be sacrificed to them. Those gods still do. They have taken on new names, but they are the same old bunch that delight in human misery and suffering. And the blood of the young.
Humans calling out for mercy is what gets demons up in the morning. The gods of light and love want to hear people sing to them, recite love poems, and prosper in their endeavors. The gods of darkness want to hear people begging for their life.
When did that old cradle of civilization, old Mesopotamia, become such a dreary place, that they follow these monsters? Why is their beginning, their accomplishments, forgotten? Why are they motivated only to crush people who disagree with them, when it comes to the name and methods of worship, of the same god?
No wonder so many young people, tend to walk away from the three, well known branches of monotheism; Judaism, Christianity and Islam. None are without fault, but only the one keeps its tradition of chaos and mayhem going, in the name of their Allah.
There is a fourth brand of monotheism, the originator of this concept of one god; Zoroastrians. They are small, and the other three look down upon them. The latter have forgotten that this is the first religion that focused on one god, Ahura Mazda, and he too, came from this ancient place. Babylon.
When Israel lost its war with Babylon, in the 7th century BC, and its people were exiled to Babylon, it motivated them to write down their religious myths and laws. The Israelis were influenced by the Zoroastrians. They studied the many myths, changed them, and made them their own. The important aspect was that Ahura Mazda was a god of light, and love. Their god would be a god of love and light.
In 536 BC, Cyrus II set the Hebrew people free to return to their lands. I would suggest, that Western Civilization begins at that event. In addition to the Old Testament, the 6th century was a golden age of religious and philosophical developments that we still hold dear to this day.
Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Lao-tse, the Hebrew prophets, the Greek poets, dramatists, philosophers, scientists and artists, leave us with a tradition of scientific inquiry, art, and philosophy, both sacred and profane, that, in the West, is as relevant today as it was 2600 years back. This is so in spite of the constant waring, the coming and goings of city-states, the parade of world conquerors from Nebuchadnezzar to Alexander to the Romans, to the Vikings, to the Germans, to Mohammed, to the early modernists; the art, math, engineering, religions, of that 6th century, BC, remain with us.
Whilst we in the West have certainly forgotten that our civilization owes a large debt to the Middle East, the Middle Easterners have forgotten their own roots. Lebanon has totally forgotten their Phoenician origins. Shame, shame, shame. The true inventors of world trade and capitalism, are stuck in the muck and mire of hatred. They have become bullies instead of negotiators. The people who gave us Carthage, are those who now give us ruins.
The past does illustrate how buildings, and the people who inhabited them, come and go. Each generation that takes over from its parent, has the choice to evolve it, or make it stagnant. Evolution, the word itself, means to make progress. If no progress is made, stagnation sets it. People find themselves dead inside, with a body that keeps going through the motions. To such a people, what is death itself except that the body ceases to perform. Making a war can be seen as seeking relief from the tediousness of life. Death in war makes one the ultimate victim.
To constantly be the living victim is to be like the cat that hides away whenever someone enters their space. Or the dog that runs away, tail between its legs, when a human approaches. They have no joy because they have been mistreated by those who are supposed to love and care for them.
People are no different. Picking up the weapon to go to war, is a change, because they have, at last, a way to express themselves as wounded, inside. If the war kills them, they stop hurting. Thus young people make choices that lead to death, not life. It is why, in the Western cultures, the embrace of the negative ideas, when it comes to not only politics, but life choices, disturb us. What does it mean when so much of the world rattles their sabres?
There are many Jeremiahs among us now, telling us to mend our ways. The difference in our Jeremiahs and the ones of times ancient, is that there is no god to turn towards. As Nietzsche said, we have killed him off. Moderns don’t think the sky god is of any use. Certainly, if we look around us, all those monotheists have forgotten him as they make their human wars. Many of these wars are fought over their version of god versus the other side’s version of god.
Does Yahweh/God/Allah like being argued over? If he has an ego, it’s cool. He loves the attention. That, however, makes him a bit too human. I like my deities to be divine.
The issue we have here is that this sacred entity is a being that has never been seen. He can only be experienced. Every word that has been written about him was written by, mostly, men. It is men that have egos. Men also have a proclivity to go to war to settle their differences in land, trade routes, women and gods. I need to add oil to that mix, though I do think, one day, electrical panel and wind farms, will be blown in a war.
How will that turn out? Messy. Though one will be able to cook the rotting food in the refrigerator by building a fire. Talk about a return to the stone age.
I digress.
Moderns like to think history is taught in schools. But, not really. What is passed on is a certain amount of data. What that data means may be touched on, however, humans beings that were not involved in the Big Decisions, get short shrift in history text books. There are books out there on private life, that is, what the peasants did on a day-by-day basis. However, to truly study history, one has to immerse themselves into primary literature. Things like court records and private diaries. Those that have been translated into English are published somewhere, but the bulk of the information has not been translated. In a thousand years, our descendants will have a pretty good handle on us, as we have left a trillion words floating around out there in digital space. Our lives are open books in comparison.
We moderns dig up old buildings, or what is left of them, to determine the past. Imagine archeology in 1000 years, when the mounds archeologists look for, have several hundred feet of buildings protruding up through them. What will they think of that? What will they think of the artificial lands, like the man made islands of Dubai? And yet, we cannot know what will be here in 1000 years. Will we be forgotten because we managed to fritter our lives away in wars over nonsense, with those weapons of mass destruction at our fingertips?
The aggressors of the past did not earn themselves eternal glory. Indeed, thinking of our demons, people who live in the negative or dark side of life do so to feed their own egos. These puppet masters do not care a wit about their people. But their people need to be awakened, to understand these dark gods use them. That the Valkyries will pick them up to serve their god in yet another war. It is eternal, this cycle of darkness. For they have forgotten Prometheus gave them light to see with.
Let us remember, that light pierces the darkness. Let us remember, prophets of light have clued us in on this. Let us remember, to learn from the past, to not leave it forgotten. It is a roadmap to the future. It is time for the people of the Light of God to flood the sphere with their ideas, to seek solutions, and to end this endless cycle war.
Can we all just get along? Yes. But we have to want to.