Troy having been destroyed beyond repair and the Greeks having been decimated, the survivors on both sides, led by their respective heroes Trojan Aeneas and Greek Odysseus, sail west over the same sea.
Accordingly the much later Roman account, the Aeneid, has both groups visited some of the same locations, experienced the same difficulties and encountered the same strange creatures such as the Cyclops. This is academically accounted for by Virgil’s plagiarism of Homer’s epics the Iliad and the Odyssey, but the sea between Troy and Greece isn’t so large so the shipping lanes so numerous as to assume out of hand that the two groups wouldn’t run into the same remarkable circumstances.
Gathering scattered auspicious lines from Roman Virgil’s Aeneid:
The Trojan chief [Aeneas] appear’d in open sight,
August [godly] in visage, and serenely bright.
His mother goddess, with her hands divine
Had form’d his curling locks, and made his temples…
Like polish’d ivory…Or Parian marble, when enchas’d in gold [anticipating Caesar’s statues]…
goddess-born…the great Aeneas…from celestial seed your lineage‘“O hospitable Jove / Jupiter / Zeus! we thus invoke,
With solemn rites, thy sacred name and pow’r…To the Cumaean coast at length he came,
Where there is a resident prophetess of Apollo,
As well as access to the underworld. According to the ancient Greeks, access points were located at
- A cavern near the ancient town of Tenarus at the tip of the middle promontory of Peloponnese, which can still be visited today. It was through this cave that Heracles dragged Cerberus out of Hades.
- The bottomless Alcyonian Lake at Lerna. Guarded by the fearsome Hydra, through which Dionysus entered the Underworld to search for his mother Semele.
- The River Styx circled the Underworld seven times.
- The Acheron. The river of sorrow and pain.
- The Cocytus. The river of lamentation and wailing.
- The Lethe. The river of oblivion and forgetfulness, out of which the dead souls are obliged to drink so that they can forget their earthly lives in preparation for a possible reincarnation.
Note the characteristics of the access points – sorrow, pain, lamentation, oblivion. These are emotional / soul qualities, not physical. In other words, this description represents a person’s soul proceeding through neurological paths to the underworld. Medically we know that the soul’s consciousness of its physical self and surroundings can be lost through extreme trauma experienced as social, emotion or physical severe pain and use of drugs to alter one’s state of consciousness.
Virgil’s account of Aeneas’ journey to the underworld should be understood, not as myth, but as shamanism, still practiced today. Interestingly, a perspective that shamanism results from psychosis has been scientifically discredited.
shaman –a person believed to have the ability to…communicate with the otherworld, and often to escort the souls of the dead to that otherworld…
- found in conjunction with animism, a belief system in which the world is home to a plethora of spirit-beings that may help or hinder human endeavours.
- Manifested as psychosomatic phenomena.
- Shamans are chosen by the spirits and tortured through physical or mental illness, until the candidate’s will is broken to accept the vocation, i.e. spirit possession.
- The soul of the shaman, joined with the possessing spirit, leaves the body to enter the spirit realm or, in the body, acts as a mouthpiece for the spirit-being, somewhat like a medium..
This is consistent with John’s report of his Holy Spirit empowered out-of-body experience of the spirit domain.
“After this – [referring to his vision of Jesus the Christ while in John’s soul was still in his body on earth – I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the spirit:” (Revelation 4:1-2)
The shaman acquires his profession through:
- inheritance / reincarnation – the soul of a dead shaman…is reborn into the new shaman’s body.
- Instruction by the spirits. not a standardized curriculum as found in Holy Scripture.
- The inner calling of the spirit who has chosen him and who forces him to accept this vocation. This compulsion is unavoidable…The spirits first lavish the unwilling shaman-to-be with all sorts of promises and, if they do not win his consent, go on to torment him. Known as “shaman illness,” these torments will anguish him…as long as the human does not accept the profession of shaman.
This detail on shamanism is consistent with the account of the wild man of the Gadarenes, who, given his ongoing social, psychological and physical torture, evidently resisted his calling.
In sum, a biblical perspective is that Aeneas, himself a hybrid being and empowered by a spirit being, in fact descended into the underworld where the soul of his deceased father took him to see the souls of his hero ancestors, his Trojan fellow warriors and his Greek enemies.
Remember, this is the underworld, abode of discorporated souls. These persons are not yet thrown into the lake of fire and communication between these beings is more credible than not. It is only those souls who are connected to the Infinite energy source who enjoy sleep during this time while awaiting resurrection into their own personal bodies.
The priestess of the god, Deiphobe her name…
to the temple she the prince invites.
A spacious cave…
“enquire your destinies. He comes; behold the god! [taking possession of her body“…
Her color chang’d; her face was not the same,
And hollow groans from her deep spirit came.
Her hair stood up; convulsive rage possess’d
Her trembling limbs, and heav’d her lab’ring breast.
Greater than humankind she seem’d to look,
When all the god came rushing on her soul…
The prince himself…His vows to great Apollo thus address’d…
Note – a vow is a mutual promise, as in marriage – you do this for me and I do this for you.
[You] Give me what Heav’n has promis’d to my fate,
To conquer and command the Latian state…
[Aeneas] Then shall my grateful hands a temple rear
To the twin gods [Apollo and Artemis], with vows and solemn pray’r;
And annual rites, and festivals, and games,
Shall be perform’d to their auspicious names.
As Harry Dresden explains, memories are life / energy for ghosts. Perpetuating the memories of the gods enhances their spirit life.
“This let me crave, since near your grove the road
To hell lies open…
Conduct me thro’ the regions void of light,
And lead me longing to my father’s sight.
Virgil’s account of the restless spirits Aeneas visits in the Underworld.is consistent with Enoch’s report of the two fates assigned to the hybrid demigod giants and the fallen angels who propagated them, not only prior to the flood but post-flood through harbored angelic genes and breeding practices. In both cases the spirits are those of the fallen angels. The hybrids have their own personal corporally-produced neurological souls that persist after death as energy fields, grounded as potential energy, like electricity.
- “From the days of the slaughter and destruction and death ⌈of the hybrid giants⌉,
- from the souls [trapped in the Underworld] of whose [mortal] flesh [decayed to dust]
- the spirits, having gone forth shall destroy without incurring judgement until the day of the consummation in which the age shall be consummated,
- And now as to the Watchers / fallen angels / pagan gods/ pure spirit beings, Say to them therefore:
- “You have no peace.”
When the host body of an possessing evil spirit dies, or is healed of possession, the spirit(s) desperately seek a new host body. This explains the great fear of the Gadarenes. Not knowing, or willing to believe in, Jesus’ infinite source of power over evil spirit’s finite power regardless of their number, they were terrified that association with Jesus would result in the Legion of devils attacking, and overcoming, them. Meanwhile, the spirits were willing to take shelter in the swine.
Or as stated in Neil Gaiman’s pagan-based Good Omens, the demon Crowley’s only dread is being dis-corporated. “it’s not like it’s ever been easy to get a new body, but this time around, things really aren’t looking good.”
In the Underworld, the hybrid / hero Aeneas is promised by the full god Apollo, cloned son of Zeus, that:
[Those] descended from your sacred line…To whom the Father of th’ immortal race – Jupiter / Zeus
First gave a holy kiss [euphemism for sexual intercourse to beget hybrids]…
The fates of thine are fix’d, and stand entire…1) when fate Aeneas calls [he dies], Then shalt thou bear him up, sublime / divine, to me
This is promising that the mortal soul of the partly god will not experience the misery of the underworld experience by fully mortal souls. This is the entitlement of being declared divine despite the observed death of the body in the cases of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.
2) Then Romulus his grandsire’s throne shall gain…
The people Romans call, the city Rome.
To them no bounds of empire I assign,
Nor term of years to their immortal line…
An age is ripening in revolving fate…
Yes, Virgil is writing in hindsight, connecting current events to ancient legends. Understand that he is not making this all up out of thin air. He is using ancient stories and treasured genealogies, just like those found in the Bible at this same time in history.
From another biblical perspective we should expect that Virgil himself, like the sibyl at Cumae, was functioning as the gods’ medium giving predictions empowered to come to pass by the spirits active in the world.
3) Then Caesar from the Julian stock shall rise,
Our heav’n, the just reward of human toils
Securely shall repay with rites divine;
And incense shall ascend before his sacred shrine.
Then dire debate and impious war shall cease,
And the stern age be soften’d into peace:
Then banish’d Faith shall once again return,
History is written by the victors, for sure, and Virgil is writing in full expectation that he will be amply rewarded for writing Julius Caesar into prophesy. But insisting that there is no possible preternatural explanation for re-knowledge of Caesar is equivalent to the Higher Critics claim that Isaiah’s Messianic prophecies can’t really be attributed to Jesus the Christ but were only applied retroactively to bolster Christianity’s legitimacy.
But then Julius Caesar is assassinated and Virgil continues writing. After all, the gods are immortal and can show up time after time. In the 6th Eclogue / Book we find the following.
But next behold the youth of form divine,
Caesar himself, exalted / august / divine in his line;
Augustus, promis’d oft, and long foretold,
Afric and India shall his pow’r obey;
He shall extend his propagated sway…
Wait. Caesar? Isn’t that the title of the head of the fourth, last empire in Daniel’s review of world history?
See details in the relevant post at the end of this book-blog.
Kingdom Come 