The Origins of Indo-European Religion

7,320 words

French translation here

Editor’s Note:

The following text is a lecture delivered by Dr. Alexander Jacob at the London Forum on September 1, 2012. Dr. Jacob’s approach, if correct, implies a revolution in Indo-European studies, as he treats the pre-Aryan diffusion of culture, which includes the Minoan, Egyptian, Sumerian, and Indus Valley civilizations, as part of a larger Indo-European culture.

In the thirties of the last century, National Socialism sought to combat the economic regimes of Capitalism and Communism with doctrines of the primacy of race, and of the Germanic race in particular. This was of course partly a strategy to impose Germanic rule over the continent after the expulsion of the internationalist Jewish forces that had hitherto controlled it. Alfred Rosenberg’s glorifications of the Nordic race in his Mythus des zwangisten Jahrhunderts, for example, were suited mainly for a Germanic Western Europe but they neglected the entire eastern part of Europe inhabited by Slavs and governed by an eastern Aryan culture. Today when Western and Central Europe and parts of Eastern Europe too are fully under the control of the American Jews through the trans-Atlantic economic and military framework of the European Union, it is important to continue the struggle undertaken by National Socialist Germany but with a broader and deeper view of Europe and its spiritual heritage. The purpose of my talk therefore is to point to the common origins of all Indo-European peoples and to the particular spiritual excellence that distinguishes them from the Jews, who as the authors of an arid mono-nationalism represent a decayed branch of the Indo-European family tree.

The recent comparative linguistic and mythological studies of scholars such as Giovanni Semerano[1] and M.L. West[2] have made it clear that the origins of Indo-European religion are to be found in and around the ancient Near East and that the erstwhile tendency to distinguish, on the basis of the linguistic difference between agglutinative and inflected languages, the Egyptian civilisation from the Sumerian and both from the so-called ‘Indo-European’ cultures of the Indo-Iranians and the Hittites and Greeks has ignored the possibility that they may have all been derived from a common racial and linguistic source.[3] The similarities between the cosmological religions of the three most ancient historic civilisations of Sumer, Egypt, and the Indus Valley indeed give credence to this possibility. The references in the Sumerian epic of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, 141-6, to a time when all the peoples of the region “in unison/ To Enlil[4] in one tongue [gave praise],” as well as in Genesis 11:1 to the sons of Noah [Shem, the Semite; Japheth, the Āryan, and Ham the Hamite] speaking the same tongue originally reinforce this theory. The common solar cosmological and philosophical orientation of the religions of Sumer, Egypt and India also suggests that these three civilisations may indeed be derived from a common source. Prof. Petr Charvat has also recently noted the emergence of the first “universal religion of Mesopotamia” already in the Chalcolithic cultures of Tel el Halaf in northern Mesopotamia and Ubaid in southern Mesopotamia dating back to the 6th millenium B.C.

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As regards the original home of the people who developed the cosmological insights shared by the most ancient religions of the region, the major evidence we have is that of the so-called “Flood” story. The Flood story is a cosmological account of the birth of the universe and its light after the destruction of the cosmos at the end of a cosmic age. The “boat” which survives the flood bears the seeds of universal life and comes to rest atop a mountain, which is indeed the location in which the light of the universe arises – as the Egyptian evidence makes clear. The story of the deluge however is transferred to a terrestrial setting in the popular flood stories of Sumer, India, and Israel. The “ark,” or boat, which sails over the flood, lands on a terrestrial mountain and this mountain is considered to be the originating point of the race itself, since the survivor is described as a primeval king or sage.

In the Indian account of the Flood in the Bhāgavata Purāna, the survivor of the Flood is Manu (Man), who is called Satyavrata, King of Dravida, and his boat comes to rest upon an unnamed “northern” mountain (VIII, 24). In the Babylonian history of Berossos, the boat of Xisouthros, the survivor of the Flood, lands in Armenia. According to Nikolaos of Damascus, a contemporary of Augustus, the Armenian mountain on which the boat landed is the Baris mountain, which may be the same as Mt. Ararat (north of Lake Van) mentioned in the biblical Flood story of Genesis 8:3. According to Berossus, the Babylonians moved to different parts of Babylonia from Armenia. In the Ethiopian version of the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes, the Brāhmans are called the sons of Adam’s son, Seth, and Noah was considered a transmitter of the wisdom of Seth. Since Adam is, as we shall see, indeed the Cosmic Man and not a human, we may assume that the Brāhmans referred to here are associated with the preservation of the Divine Consciousness of Brahman which arises from the Cosmic Egg and is later conveyed to humanity by Manu/Noah.

Since the earliest centres of high culture are those of the Canaanites, Hatti, Elamites, Sumerians, and Egyptians, it is possible that the region around Mt. Ararat was the central region from whence the proto-Dravidians travelled to Palestine, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia and the shores of the Black Sea.[5] It is probable also that one of the earliest regions to be settled by the Noachidian peoples from neighbouring Armenia was Anatolia. This is suggested by the great antiquity of the Neolithic archaeological finds at Çatal Hüyük in (ca. 7th millenium B.C.). The civilisation of Syro-Palestine may be even as old as that of Anatolia since settlements in Jordan are traceable from the late 7th millennium B.C. and in Byblos from the 6th. Following the archaeological finds from Anatolia and Syro-Palestine are those from Susa in Elam, in southwestern Iran. Speiser, along with Frankfort, conjectured that the source of this culture may have been in Armenia itself, since the farthest northern site to yield pottery of the Susa I type is Mt. Ararat. As for the biblical account of the earliest Elamites, it considers Elam as a son of Shem. This suggests that a major constituent of the proto-Dravidian population in Elam must have been proto-Semites, probably proto-Akkadian Semites.

Of the early Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia, Eridu, which dates from the sixth millennium B.C., shows marked Elamite affinities. It is important to note that, according to Speiser, the original name of Ku’ara (near Eridu) in the first dynasty of Uruk – HA.A^ki – may be of Subarian, or Hurrian origin. The very term “subari” or, more precisely, “suwari,” is related to Suvalliyat (Suvariya)/Sūrya, which is also the Hititte/Indic name of the sun-god. Hurri then would be the Iranian pronunciation of the same name, as the Iranian name of the sun-god, “Hvare,” suggests. The original Noachidian or proto-Dravidian race is thus most probably identifiable with the proto-Hurrians who inhabited the Anatolian-Halafian settlements associated with the Subarians/Suwarians/Hurrians from the seventh millennium B.C. These earliest Hurrians spoke an agglutinative Caucasoid language that possessed Dravidian characteristics and F. Bork and G.W. Brown have revealed the intimate linguistic relationship between Hurrian (along with its Mitanni dialect), Elamite, and Dravidian. The Semitic, Japhetic, and Hamitic peoples mentioned in the Bible are all closely related to this original race whose very name points to a characteristic religious worship of the sun.

The earliest sites of northern Mesopotamian culture are to be found in Tel el Halaf, dating back to around 5000 B.C. The powerful influence of the Halafian culture is attested in the imitations of its pottery in southern Armenia as well as in northeastern Syria. The Tel el Halaf pottery is marked by bucranium designs which associate it with the seventh millennium shrines of Çatal Hüyük in eastern Anatolia, which may have been established by the earliest proto-Dravidians or Hurrians. Charvat has revealed that the fundamental social and religious forms of later Mesopotamian culture, including that of Uruk in Sumer, are evident already in embryonic form in the early Chalcolithic sites of northern Mesopotamia. Crematory practices associated with fire-rituals are noticed here and Tell Arpachiyah (TT6) also gives the first evidence of the use of the white-red-black colour triad which persists from Chalcolithic times to Uruk[6] and is representative of the three original castes of the Indo-Europeans, priests, warriors, and the people (i.e. agriculturists and artisans).

The imperfect state of archaeological researches in the regions under investigation prohibits any definite identification of the original race which created the spiritual culture of these earliest civilisations of mankind. However, since all these civilisations are situated in the south and, according to Gordon Childe, the predominant racial element in the earliest graves in the region from Elam to the Danube is the ‘Mediterranean’,[7] we may presume that these early cultures were founded by the genius of that broad racial group. The dolicocephalic Mediterranean, or “brown,”[8] race may thus have constituted the earliest strata of the populations of Asia, Egypt and Europe. This race may be identified as the “proto-Dravidian” or “proto-Hurrian” or even proto-Indo-European race.

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Of the three historic linguistic branches associated with the sons of Noah, Shem, Japhet and Ham, the earliest literary evidence is mostly of the Semitic proto-Akkadian. Many of the words of the earliest Uruk tablets that were designated as “proto-Euphratean” by B. Landsberger are most probably of proto-Akkadian origin, as G. Rubio has recently pointed out. Langdon, however, noted that most of the Semitic names were concentrated in the north, and this suggests the “entrance of the Semites into the northern area at Kish and Maer at a very early period.” The Semitic Akkadian culture of northern Mesopotamia must have been related also to that of Elam, which is described in Genesis 10:20 as a “son” of Shem. It is not surprising that the earliest Akkadians were closely associated with Hurrian tribes as well, with whom they seem to have shared a common historical tradition. We have here an indication of the great antiquity of the Semitic Akkadian family.

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Although the earliest attested religions are those of the Semites and the Sumerian and Egyptian Hamites, the Japhetic Āryans may indeed have been older than the Hamites, since Ham is represented in the earliest Jahvist version of the Bible as “the youngest son of Noah”.[9] The Āryans are generally divided into eastern, “shatem” and western, “centum” Āryans. Regarding the western Āryan peoples, we may note that, in Genesis 9:2, the eldest son of Japheth [the Āryans] is called Gamer, representing the Cimmerians, who are described by Herodotus (IV,14) as having had their initial home “on the shores of the Black Sea”. The Cimmerians are probably identical to the most ancient Celts, since the Welsh (who are a southern Celtic people like the Bretons) call themselves, to this day, “Cymry.” Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca Historica V,32) also states that the Celts living close to the Black Sea are scattered “as far as Scythia” and the northernmost of these Celtic tribes are the wildest and most powerful having apparently “wandered across and laid waste the whole of Asia, under the then name of Cimmerians.” The northern Celts are no doubt the Goidelic but the fact that the ancient name is preserved chiefly among the Bretonic Welsh may be due to the predominance of the conservative Druidic element among the latter.

Although the Celts are western Japhetic Āryans, the sons of Gamer, in the biblical Table of Nations, include Ashkenaz (the Scythians, who are eastern Japhetic Āryans), Riphath (uncertain) and Thokarmah (possibly the Tokharians, or the Germans, who were called Tungri). The Celts and the Scythians are closely associated, as is indicated by Strabo (XI,7,2) who states that the Greek authors called all the northern populations Scythians or Celtoscythians.

The “brothers” of Gamer include Magog (the Magi or Iranians), Madai (the Medes/Mitanni/Indo-Iranians), Javan (Greeks), Tubal, Mesech and Tiras, the last three unidentifiable. The eastern Japhetic Iranians are represented in Herodotus as worshipping the “circle of heaven” (Ahura, from Ashur/Anshar=circle of heaven) as well as the heavenly bodies. The Iranians discussed by Herodotus however did not build temples or worship statuary representations of their deities (I,131), and this emphasises their ancient affiliation with the Scythians, whereas the Mitanni- and the Hittite-Hurrians, however, were certainly not averse to such representations. Besides, the Iranian rituals are described by Herodotus as not involving fire, even though the later Zoroastrian religion – like the Indic – is indeed typified by its worship of fire, Atar. This suggests that the later Iranians must have come into contact in the south with the Pururuva Ailas [Elamites/Hurrians], who, as we shall see, derived their worship of fire from the Gandharvas who are related to the settlers of the Bactro-Margiana Archaeological Complex in Afghanistan.

The earliest historical branch of the Indo-Āryans is manifest in the 16th century B.C. in northern Mesopotamia, in the kingdom of the Mitanni. The original home of the Mitanni remains uncertain. The Mitanni themselves may be identifiable with the Medes, and, as Herodotus (VII,69) reveals, the Medes were once universally called Arians. The Medes may have been related to the proto-Iranians, since several Median words are traceable in Old Persian. The Mitanni kings have Sanskritic names distinguished by their charioteering affiliation, and this expertise is reflected also in the names (Keres-aspa, Pourus-aspa) of the Iranian branch of the Āryan family, as well as in the extraordinary prestige ascribed to the horse by the Indo-Āryans in their sacred rituals. The close relation between the Indo-Āryans and Iranians and the Scythians is confirmed by the veneration of the horse among the Scythians reported by Herodotus (IV,61). However, the Mitanni exhibit an adherence to a Vedic (and not to the later Zoroastrian Avestan) form of religion, along with a worship of Hurrian deities, thus establishing the relative lateness of the Zoroastrian religion.

The third and younger group of eastern Āryans, the Scythians, are located by Herodotus north of the Black Sea in close proximity to the Cimmerians, who are represented in the Biblical Table of Nations as their forebears (“father”) under the name of Gamer. According to Herodotus (IV,3), the Scythians considered themselves as the “youngest of all nations”. However, the wide territory of the Scythians extended through Russia to Central Asia. The Scythians are also closely associated with the Indo-Iranians with whom they shared an eastern “shatem” Āryan language and much of their religious practices. The predominance of the Iranian language in the regions inhabited by Cimmerians and Scythians, that is, from the Danube to the Dnieper, is evidenced also by the names of the Danube, Dnieper and Dniester, which employ the Avestan term “danu” for river. Indeed, this area corresponds to that inhabited by the Slavs and we may reasonably consider the Scythians as the forebears of the latter.

Herodotus’ account of the Scythians (IV,59) however suggests that they did not possess much sophistication in their religious rituals. Darius I (522-486 B.C.) himself refers to the Sakas as “unruly” and not devoted to Ahura Mazda. Herodotus’ account of the religious customs of the Scythians (IV,59) indeed reveals their sharp focus on martial life, since they apparently did not set up altars or statues to any god except Ares, god of war. Eliade’s researches also point to a very rudimentary practical application of the spiritual bases of the cosmological religion of the ancient Near East to quasi-shamanistic rituals. This also explains their ancient designation as “hoamavarga”, or “soma-drinking”, Scythians.

It is interesting to note, however, that even the Indians and the Avestan Iranians seem originally to have been nomadic peoples akin to the Scythians, as is attested by the language of the Old Avesta, wherein the cosmos is viewed as an enormous tent. However, there seem to have followed other waves of Indo-Āryans who settled in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex [situated in present-day Afghanistan and Turkmenistan] around 2200–1700 B.C. and the Gandhara region [around Peshawar] around 1700 B.C. who had maintained the tradition of fire-rituals. These cultures can be traced back ultimately to the Hut Grave and Catacomb Grave cultures of the Ukraine (ca. 2800 B.C.) and, earlier, to the Yamnaya Culture (fourth millenium B.C.), also north of the Black Sea. Elaborate fire altars are evident in the ruins of the BMAC complex  which correspond to the Āryan fire-sacrifices. The temples also contain rooms with “all the necessary apparatus for the preparation of drinks extracted from poppy, hemp and ephedra” that may have been used for the soma-rituals.[10]

When we investigate the crucial issue of the institution of fire-rituals among the Indo-Āryans, we should remember that neither the earliest Iranians, nor the Mitanni Indo-Āryans, nor the Scythians give any evidence of such fire-worship. In the Purānas, Pururavas, the early Aila [=Elamite?] king, is said to have obtained sacrificial fire from the “Gandharvas”, who also taught him the constitution of the three sacred fires of the Āryans. This suggests that the early Hurrians of Elam and the earliest Iranians did not worship fire and learnt it from a later, more northerly wave of Āryans. However, even the Gandharvas are included among the Aila [=Elamite?] dynasties in the Purānas, which suggests that they too were a northern and eastern branch of proto-Hurrians identifiable with the Japhetic. These Japhetic tribes that moved northwards to the Pontic-Caspian steppes created the Yamnaya culture there, which is considered the major source of the Āryan peoples.

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As for the western “centum” Aryans, even though the Cimmerians or Celts, represented by Gamer, are considered the first-born of Japheth, the earliest historical evidence of a “centum” language is from Anatolia, among the Hittites. The so-called Hittites were, unlike the native Hatti, Āryans. But they, like the Cimmerian Japhetites (as well as the Semites and Hamites) do not provide archaeological evidence of any fire-rituals in their religious worship. The Hittite kingdom also shows a strong neo-Hurrian cultural influence from the fifteenth century B.C. and many of the Hittite queens bear Hurrian names, just as in the case of the Mitanni. The Hittite religion is fully Sumero-Hurrian but has particular affinities with the Mitanni and Indo-Āryan as well.

The Greeks most probably arrived in the Helladic region around 2200 B.C. from Anatolia, though it is possible that Japhetic tribes from the shores of the Black Sea moved overland to Greece as well. The pre-Greek Minoan culture of Crete however was instrumental in developing the Linear A script (before 1700 B.C.) which preceded the Āryan Mycenean Linear B (1300 B.C.). And just as the Cretan script is at the base of the Mycenean, so too their religion is continued unchanged by the later immigrants. It is not surprising thus that the Cretan Zeus, who is the son of Chronos, is called Zagreus, which suggests an origin of the deity in the Zagros mountains of western Iran.

Farther west, one of the oldest branches of the Germanic peoples is called the Alemanni, a name that is certainly related to Aryamanni, which may equally be the original of the term “Armenian.” According to Snorri Sturlusson, the author of the Prose Edda, the Germans first derived their religion from Anatolians who moved into Europe. The first Anatolian (one of the “Aesir” [Asuras]) who migrated into Germany is said to be “Voden” or “Odin,” the god of Wind [the original Germanic form, Wotan, is clearly related to the Indo-Iranian Wata, a form of the wind-god, Vāyu]. Odin, however, is said to be a distant descendant of “Tror” or “Thor”, the son of a Trojan king called Mennon or Munon [=Manu?] who had married a daughter of King Priam. Thor himself is said to have first wandered to Thrace and then to other parts of the world. We will note that Thrace is also the source of the Dionysiac cult.

Odin’s three sons, Vegdeg, Beldeg (Baldur) and Sigi ruled over East Germany, Westphalia, and France, respectively. Further expeditions took Odin to Denmark, Sweden and Norway, whereby he succeeded in spreading the “language of Asia” all over Europe. We see therefore the centrality of Anatolia as the land whence most of the western Indo-European cultures were derived, even though the Celtic Cimmerians were largely located north of the Black Sea.

According to Tacitus, Mannus [cognate with the Indic Manu] was the ancestor of the Germanic race, and he had three sons represented by the Ingaevones (the north Germans including the Scandinavians and the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons), Herminones (the West Germans including the Goths, Burgundians and Lombardians) and Istaevones (the Low Germans, Franks, Dutch and Belgians). The first Germanic tribe to have crossed the Rhine and ousted the indigenous Celts were the Tungri (a Belgic tribe), whose other name, Germani, was used for all the tribes.

The chief god of the Germans is said by Tacitus to be the creator god Tuisto [from Tvashtr/Tvoreshtar/Tartarus], though Ingvi, another name for Freyr, must have been the god of the Ingaevones just as Hermin, a name for Wotan, must have been the chief deity of the Herminones, while Istae remains obscure.

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As regards the cosmological and philosophical insights that inform the ancient religions, it is likely that they were developed first through yogic meditation, as the Brahmānda Purāna I,i,3,8, for instance, declares. It is significant that, in the Mahabhārata, Shalyaparva, 44, Skanda or Muruga, the Dionysiac god of the Dravidians, is described as being endowed with yogic powers while his father Shiva is in Mbh, Anushāsanaparva, 14, is addressed as the “soul of yoga” and the object of all yogic meditation. Since it is most likely that the Noachidian race was indeed a proto-Dravidian/proto-Hurrian one, it is probable that this profound yogic knowledge of the universe is characteristic of it.

The religion of the ancients was based on a spiritual vision of the formation of the cosmos. After the cosmic deluge which marks the end of the first cosmic age (kalpa), the Divine Soul, Ātman, within the cosmic ocean (the Abyss) gradually recreates the cosmos assuming the form of an Ideal Macroanthropos, or Cosmic Man. The breath or life-force (Vāyu/Wotan) of the cosmic Man first unites with matter (Earth) to form a closely united complex of Heaven (the substance of the Purusha) and Earth. But the temporal aspect (Kāla, Chronos) of the rapidly moving breath or wind also separates the two elements, an event represented as a castration of the Purusha. The semen that falls from the castrated phallus impregnates the Purusha himself with a Cosmic Egg from which emerge the manifest cosmos comprised, again, of Earthly substance and Heavenly light (Brahman). This luminous Brahman is also represented anthropomorphically as a Cosmic Man.

However, this light continues to possess a stormy quality which is a persistence of Chronos in the manifest cosmos. This force, represented as Zeus/Seth/Ganesha,  shatters the light and forces it to descend to the lower regions of Earth, where it lies moribund as, for instance, Osiris. However, the same storm-force has in the meanwhile swallowed the divine phallus and thus eventually revives the moribund light in the underworld with its potency. Then it separates the substance of Earth into the earthly regions and heaven of our universe and emerges through the cleft between the two into the mid-region of the stars as a universal Tree of Life or Phallus. The seed of this newly formed universe is then emitted within our galaxy, first as the moon and then the solar force finally emerges above the top of the Tree (Phallus) as the sun.

The process of developing life on earth is supervised by the seventh Manu of our age whom we have encountered as the King of Dravida. This Manu is responsible for the continuance of mankind on the earth as well as for its spiritual evolution. In this task he is assisted by seven sages, who represent the wisdom and culture of enlightened man. The Brahmans derive their ancestry from these seven sages and so we see that the Brahmanical religion is indeed the oldest and one originally marked by yogic spiritual elevation.

Since we have identified the proto-Indo-Europeans as proto-Hurrians or proto-Dravidians, we may pause to consider what the earliest form of their religion may have been. We have noted that the Cimmerians are the most ancient of the Japhetic Aryans and we know that their priests were called Druids, so it is possible that the Druids are indeed descendants of the proto-Dravidians themselves. The phonetic similarity of “Druid” to “Dravida” is obvious. In classical texts, the name of the Druids appears mostly in a plural form, as “druidai“ (Gk.) or “druidae“ or “druides“ (Lt.).[11] In Irish, “drai“ or “druí“ is the singular form of a word meaning “wise man“, of which “draod“ or “druid“ is the plural. The association of the Druids with the Greek word for “oak“, first made by Pliny (Historia Naturalis XVI,95), is probably a later one due to the importance of tree-worship among the ancient Druids, as well as amongst most of the ancient Indo-European peoples, since the sacred tree serves as a symbol of the divine phallus representing the life of the universe.

The Druids seem to have been the priests of the Cimmerian Celts especially in Gaul and Britain. Since there is no evidence of them in other Celtic territories such as the Danube, Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul it is possible that they are themselves of non-Celtic origin.[12] However, among the Gauls, the Druids, along with the “equites“, constituted the higher “castes”. Piggott believed that the Druidic tradition may go back to at least the second millennium B.C. since it has much in common with the Indo-European language and ideology, especially the Sanskritic and Hittite.[13] However, it is quite possible that the Druids were settled in Europe even earlier than the Āryans, perhaps as early as the third millennium B.C. The three-headed god attributable to the Druids in the Marne and the Côte d’Or is possibly related to the three- (or four-) headed god[14] of the Indus Valley of the third millennium B.C.[15] Hence it is not surprising that Clement of Alexandria believed that the Pythagorean and Greek philosophers derived their wisdom from the Gauls and other barbarians,[16] by which he no doubt meant the Druidic priestly core of these tribes. Dio Chrysostom (1^st c. A.D.) considered the Druids as being similar to the Persian Magi, Egyptian priests and Indian Brāhmans. It may be recalled that F.E. Pargiter once maintained that Brāhmanism itself may not have been originally Āryan but adopted into Indo-Āryan religion from Dravidian.[17] However, Pargiter did not consider the possibility that both Āryan and later Dravidian may have been derived from a proto-Dravidian/Hurrian spiritual culture.

The religion of the Druids was clearly cosmological, as is attested in the commentaries of Caesar, who attributed to them much knowledge of the stars and their motion, and of the size of the world.[18] Ammianus Marcellinus declared that they investigated “problems of things secret and sublime“.[19] Diodorus Siculus, following Posidonius, maintained that they held that “the souls of men are immortal, and that after a definite number of years they have a second life when the soul passes to another body“,[20] which is also the doctrine of the proto-Dravidians who formulated the original tenets of Indian religion.

Although the Celtic religion included sacrifices, even human, there is no evidence however of fire-worship among the Druids such as became characteristic of the Indo-Āryans and Iranians.[21] However the veneration of fire among the ancient Celts may be dimly detected in the relative frequency of the appellation “Áed” (fire) among the legendary and early historical high-kings of Ireland.[22] It is only among the the proto-Aryans that the Indo-European religious rituals become centred on fire-worship, which entails an external dramatisation of cosmic events and particularly the birth of the sun within the sacred sacrificial fire, Agni. However, with the rise of the later Hamitic cultures of Sumer and Egypt, the adoration of the cosmic forces assumed anthropomorphic forms and idolatrous temple-worship became the rule, as it did in later Hinduism as well. At the same time, it should be noted that the temples of the ancient Indo-Europeans as well as the fire-rituals of the Āryans are both equally built on a sacred ground-plan (mandala) of the Purusha who is revived, through the various rituals performed therein, to his original cosmic solar splendour. In the Indo-Aryan sacrifices the sacrificer undergoes a ritual death and rebirth as the sun, whereas in the Hamitic temple worship, the sacred idol is adored as a living representation of the nascent and developing sun. Both these forms of worship are naturally related to the Tantric yogic exercises that employ the correspondences between macrocosm and microcosm to divinise the adept himself.

The gods of the various cultures that emerged from the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans symbolise the various vital aspects of the macroanthropomorphic Purusha. Thus Enlil, Vāyu, Wotan, representing the divine breath or life-force, are chief gods among the Sumerians, Indians and Germans; Thor, Zeus, Indra, Perun represent the storm-force, among the Germans, Greeks, Indians, and Slavs; and Atum, An, Brahman, Mithra, Helios, Sol are worshipped by the Egyptians, Sumerians, Indians, Zoroastrians, Greeks and Mithraists as the cosmic Light. While the fire-sacrifices and temple-rituals of the ancient Indo-European religions were considered necessary for the well-being of the Purusha and the proper functioning of the universe, the aim of the truly enlightened sage, however, was to transcend the cosmic incarnation altogether through yogic ascesis.

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We have seen that the prisca theologia of the ancient Indo-Europeans is clearly a polytheistic one, and the transformation of this polytheism to Christian pseudo-monotheism under the influence of Hebrew monotheism merits a closer investigation. Hebrew monotheism should more properly be designated as a mono-nationalism based on the tribal cult of Yahve, the god of the Hebrews. The Hebrews are a branch of the Western Semitic (and Indo-European) Arameans and are recognisable in the nomadic “habiru” of the ancient Near East who were considered as dangerous and subversive brigands and mercenaries.[23] The original Abrahamic aversion to the cosmological polytheism of the Indo-Europeans is evident from the references in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, I,157 and Philo the Jew’s De mutatione nominum, 72-6. While the genuinely universal religion of the Indo-Europeans is based on a scientific and philosophical understanding of the cosmos, Hebraic monotheism began and continues today not so much as a worship of any universal spiritual forces but, rather, as a political doctrine of mono-nationalism (that is, the unique concentration on the history of the Israelites as the destiny of mankind). The mono-nationalist monotheistic revolt of the Hebrews (Abraham) against the cosmological religions of their neighbours in the ancient Near East thus represents the first fall of Jewish-directed mankind from its original spiritual focus. As the 19th century English cultural historian Houston Stewart Chamberlain pointed out, the predominantly materialistic mind of the Jewish scribes is clearly evident in their transformation of the elaborate mythological speculations of the Sumero-Akkadians into a mere historical record of the Jewish tribe itself:

The fantastically scientific ideas in Genesis, concerning the origin of the organic world [which was originally the mythical and symbolical conception of an imaginative people (probably the Sumero-Accadians)] … all that became `history’ [in the hands of the Jews] and thereby it at the same time lost all significance as religious myth; for myth is elastic, inexhaustible whereas here a simple chronicle of facts, an enumeration of events, lies before us. That is materialism … with this view of religion only practical ends are pursued, no ideal ones.[24]

It is true that there is some cosmological mysticism in the Kabbalistic works such as Sepher Yetzirah (The Book of the Creation) and the Zohar (The Book of the Light), which were also composed in the first centuries A.D. These works, like the Gnostic ones, were derived in all probability from the Assyrians among whom the Hebrews were exiled in the 6th century B.C.[25] and contain some insights into the original cosmological bases of the first few sections of Genesis. The Kabbalah begins with the ineffable Deity Ein Sof (corresponding to Ātman) and posits two trinities emanating from him, representing the Ideal Man (Adam Kadmon) and the Cosmic Man. The first ideal trinity is constituted of

1. Being (Eheieh) also called Kether or the Crown, conceived of as a point Arich Anpin,
2. the ideal light constituted of a Father, Chokmah (also called Jahve) and a Mother, Binah (also called Elohim), and their progeny,
3. a male hypostasis called Chesed (also called El) and a female one called Geburah (also called Eloh).

The last two together produce the second, cosmic trinity, ruled by

1. Tiphereth or the King (also called Eloha), who corresponds to the brilliant divine Consciousness of Brahman and also to the cosmic Christ. The King rules over

2. a male hypostasis Netzah (also called Jahve Sabaoth) and a female Hod (also called Elohim Sabaoth) who in turn produce

3. Yesod (also called El Chai), corresponding to Re as Osiris, and the female world of matter Malkuth (also called Shekinah) corresponding to Isis.

The final effect of this cosmic evolution which is the creation of the sun is not elaborated upon in the Kabbalah. However, we note that the Kabbalistic conception of Jahve is indeed loftier than the biblical one where Jahve is considered as the creator of the earthly Adam and god of only the Jewish tribes.

As for the Christian cult, the fact that it too was derived from Indo-European cosmogonical notions, and dates back, like the Kabbalah, to the time of the Babylonian exile, is clear from the contemporary Gnostic cosmological descriptions of the Christ as the cosmic macro-anthropomorphic manifestation of the Idea of God, as well as in the extraordinary story of the death and resurrection of the Christ himself, since this can only be a historicisation of the cosmic drama of the descent of the solar force (Osiris) into the underworld and its later emergence as the sun (Horus) of our solar system. Another proof of the mythological basis of the Christ story is the employment of a “carpenter” as the father of Jesus, since this figure corresponds exactly to the formative force Tvashtr (Tuisto among the Germans) of the cosmic Man, Purusha, for the Indo-Iranian name Tvoreshtar also signifies a carpenter. It is Tvashtr who forms the seed of the light of the universe which appears as Brahman, whereas the impregnation of the material substrate of the cosmos is undertaken by the breath of the Purusha, represented as the wind-deity Vāyu (Wotan), who corresponds to the Christian Holy Spirit. As we know, at the Council of Ephesus of 431 A.D., the Virgin Mary too was confirmed as the mother not of a human son but, rather, of God, while the Lateran Council of 469 clarified that Mary conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit. The translation of this cosmological myth of Jesus, which is the same as that of Helios/Brahman, into a historical tale set in Roman times in Judaea is perhaps the work of the Jews who called themselves the Evangelists, and of Paul, who wished to make the Christian cult an international Jewish one by adding a final chapter to the Jewish history of the Old Testament.

The Christian aversion to the historical and nationalistic form of biblical Judaism appears already in the doctrines of the early Christian thinker, Marcion of Sinope (2nd c. A.D.).[26] Marcion was revolted by the Hebraic conception of Jahve as a tribal god who sanctions all manner of crimes to his “chosen” Israelites and so he, like the contemporary Gnostics, differentiated the demiurge of the material universe, Jahve, from the “Heavenly Father” of Christ, who is identified with the earlier hypostasis, Chokmah, of the Kabbalist system who generates Tiphereth/Brahman/the cosmic Christ. Marcion’s opposition to Jahve shows us that, already in Marcion’s time, the Old Testament conception of Jahve was considered as being totally different from the kabbalistic. According to Marcion, the sins of the mankind created by Jahve had to be expiated by the sacrifice of the Incarnate God, Christ, in order that all men may inherit eternal Life. Unfortunately, in spite of his intellectual discernment, Marcion was excommunicated by the Roman Church which reinforced its Judaic connections by forming an orthodox “Catholic,” or universal, church.

The anti-Jewish Christianity of Marcion, as well as the teachings of the Gnostics who went so far as to identify the Jewish god with the “devil,” the diabolical deity that rules the world of matter, highlights the fact that the Old Testament as we have it neglects the spiritual bases of the older polytheistic cosmogony contained in the Kabbalah in favour of a monotheistic glorification of the history of the Jewish tribes. Indeed, Judaism has by and large subordinated the Kabbalistic exegeses to the literal study of the Torah and Talmud which are mundane records of early Jewish political and social life quite lacking in spirituality. The lack of any strong development of the Kabbalah as a mainstream Jewish cult  confirms the foreign origins of the system and its quasi-polytheistic cosmogonical model has not succeeded in transforming the ethno-political obsession of the Hebrews which gave the revolutionary religion of Abraham its first and most typical form.

Although the Europeans were forced to forget their own cosmological Indo-European religions when they were converted to a reformed Jewish religion, Christianity, they retained the original polytheistic religious sensibility of Christianity in their adherence to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit, as well as in the Roman Catholic adoration of Mary and the several saints. With the Protestant, and especially Puritan, revolts against Catholicism, however, the cosmological aspects of the Trinity and of Marian worship were forced out by a return to a literal, mundane and monotheistic interpretation of the Old Testament.

Today this trend has progressed to such an extent that present-day Evangelists in America fight for Israel as if for their own nation. Since, as we have seen, the rabbinical form of Judaism is not really religious at all but rather a political cult holding the Jews together in their materialistic and financial ambitions, the fight of the Western powers for Israel is one that can hope to establish only a material, Las Vegas-style, “paradise” on earth ruled dictatorially by the so-called “God” of Israel. The military, commercial and social efforts of the Zionist Jews to sustain their aberrant worldly religion and the Israeli state that serves as its political symbol thus constitute the most alarming threat today to the cosmocentric spiritual culture of the Indo-Europeans which forms the deep foundation of both European and Indian civilisation.

For Europe to recover its strength it must sever all links with the Jewish adjuncts and associations of Christianity, that is, it must revert to the more anti-Judaic forms of Chrisitianity that marked the Roman Catholic Church in the later Middle Ages and the two empires that developed under its aegis, the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine. Such a renewed Christianity that is in accord with the spirit of cosmic polytheism and of self-renunciation that we have glimpsed in the ancient Indo-European religions is the obvious foundation of the reunification of the various parts of Europe, western and eastern. At the same time it is the surest bulwark against Zionism which continues the irreligiosity of the Jahvist Jews in the form of Marxist atheistic internationalism and its various vacuous forms of modernism. If Europe is to survive the apocalyptic effects of the two great wars of the last century, it must be reunited again with a uniform religious culture whose spiritual elevation may allow its peoples to once again assume mastery of their own ancient and sacred lands.

Notes

1. See Giovanni Semerano, Le Origini della Cultura Europea: Rivelazioni della linguistica storica (Florence: Leo Olschki, 1984-94). The etymological dictionary provided in this work gives Akkadian and Sumerian origins for many of the ancient Greek, Latin and German words.