Terror Below -- The Sea

In my previous posting, I suggested that we are especially terrified by terrors below because we are instinctually programmed to expect attacks from above and beside, but never below. Yet as descendants from tree-dwelling monkeys, we carry genetical programming that does anticipate attack from below ... In other words, there’s this residual fear of attack from below, but that residual has been buried (so to speak) -- until it necessarily arises.

I suggested that this argument is especially pertinent to the sea. On the land we might presumably safely assume that nothing can attack from beneath us, but on the ocean, we ought to expect it, right?

Yet we find terrors beneath the surface of the ocean especially horrifying.

There’s this whole sense of the impossibility of boating, for example. “My God!” one ought to reasonably realize, "I’m barely suspended above miles of depths full of horrors, held barely in suspension by surface tension!" It’s the same terror that so many people feel when flying: "Wake up!" we scream inside. "My God! Falling is just pretend! We’re going to fall!"

Vertigo, that dizzying horror we feel on the edge of cliff, ought to be present in every trip on a boat. I suspect that it is there, but shoved back into the back of our minds ready to be reawakened as soon as something surfaces.

Compound this with the true horrors of the deep: sharks, giant squid, whale so big that they should see us as mere squashable gnats…

No wonder, then, that so many horror films and Greek legends have picked up our terrors from below when skimming the surface of those great unknown seas....

Anyhow, in the next couple of postings I want to first examine the more unexpected horrors of terrors beneath us while we are land, followed by an examination of related mythology.

Terror Below

Humans, we’re told, are a species of ape. Descended from monkeys, tree dwellers, evolved to expect danger from three dimensions—some monkeys have three distinct instinctual danger cries: one for eagles swooping from above, another for snake slithering along the branches, and a third for jaguars, leaping from below. Humans, on the other hand, have one cry: “Heads up!”

No surprise as our species migrated to ground where danger from below is seemly eliminated. But consider three personal tales. First, a great uncle, working for the CCC in Florida during the 30s. Out for a hike in the swamps and he steps on a gator. It lunges, grabs his leg, and starts to spin; this is its instinctual means of breaking limbs which it will follow by releasing the leg, grabbing the shocked victim’s torso, and dragging it below for drowning. My uncle, however, is a Florida cracker, having once with my grandfather captured baby alligators for the zoo and placed them in their rain barrel for temporary safe keepings, much to my great-grandmother’s alarm. So my uncle drops into a roll with the gator, spinning his body so that his legs are not broken, and when the gator lets go to grab his torso, he leaps up and limps off safely back to camp. “Boys,” he announces bleeding, “I been gator bit.” He wears the scar with pride for a lifetime.

Consider, secondly, a good friend who was bit and nearly killed by a rattlesnake as a youngster, also in Florida. When I know him, during cross country in high school, his snake-spotting skills border on E.S.P. On the surface of the tale, this does not sound like death from below, but consider the snake beneath those sticks where your foot is very nearly planted….

Finally (thirdly) consider the horrifying occurrence of my wife, seven months pregnant, getting up to pee for the third time in the night. “Pissss,” and suddenly there’s this squeaking. Her urethra clenches and the pee stops and the squeaking stops. She starts to pee again and the squeaking starts again. “I guess,” she thinks, “that pregnant ladies must squeak when they pee. Huh—nobody told me about that.” Stops peeing, reaches behind to flush the toilet, and turns around … just in time to see a bat swirling down the toilet. And then my son was born with wings and fangs!!! Okay—just kidding on the last bit—but seriously, there’s a horror tale in there, no?

My “heads up” example was, of course, a joke. But try this simple thought experiment. Imagine yourself in a crowd. Yell, “look out!!!” How many people in your imagination looked slightly upward or scanned left and right, turned around? More importantly, how many people looked down?

I have, perhaps, misconsidered the sailor. But the long and short of all this is that there is something instinctually terrifying about danger from below. Above—a pop fly to center field while we’re distracted by picking our nose?—we can deal with that. Sideways—a fist to the face?—well it hurts, but it’s the kind of danger we’re programmed to receive. But attack from *below*?!? Danger Will Robinson! Does not compute!

In some upcoming postings, I will take a look at few real-life animals that dwell below, before looking to fiction and the mythological. Danger still lurks from below, and our primordial instincts cringe. No wonder, then, that we equate hell and Gog and Magog with the Underneath?

Sunday Update

In Walking on the Moon we quoted a book (Dark Mission) which claims that NASA is dominated by secret brotherhoods, "with policies far more aligned with ancient religious and occult mystery schools than the façade of rational science the government agency has successfully promoted to the world for almost fifty years."

This may be true, but we haven't got to that point in the book yet. So far our criticism of his Cydonia and lunar civilization claims is this:

If you sliced author Ricard Hoagland from throat to groin, so much bullshit would spill out that you could keep a village load of organic farmers in operation for a year, at least.

Also, using the same kind of photographic "evidence" as you can find in this book, we have proof that Spider Man is a Satanist. To whit:


'Nuff said.

Gog and Magog: Ruminations

Last week I promised to meditate on Gog/Magog while vacationing. This is what happened.

Riding from a carnival. “Something’s happening!” my son yells. “Something’s happening!”

I was shamefully unmindful, caught instead by the realization that each age receives the prophecies it deserves.

We receive what we request.

I considered the two prophecies: Bush proclaimed himself as ben David set to rectify his father’s Persian setbacks—while others decried Bush as Gog himself.

But these are just twin visions operating in the same prophetic space. I can see the two armies clashing as clearly as the valley viewed from the hillock. Yet I also sense a blind spot, something horrible, unseen and looming.

Norman O. Brown, considering H.G. Well’s sense that Mind had reached the end of its Tether, saw a snarling dog (yo!). Only holy madness can break Brown’s leash—ever lunging forward. But it seems to me that the better metaphor might be prophecy as territory.

We are still exploring that prophetic space set in Revelations, discovering new valleys with new interpretations—but outside of this territory is blankness, and our civilization is winding down as we run out room to expand.

“Something’s happening!” my son shouted for the third time.

And then he pooped his pants.

My wife frowns while she sleeps.

Gog and Magog: The Textual Sources

Last week I posted some thoughts on Gog & Magog. I found sources difficult to discover, so in hopes of sparing others some struggle, I am posting and maintaining my notes here.

My apologies in advance for a methodical, plodding post, but as Freud reminded us, "Man is only Beast lest he tiptoe his way toward Grace."(1)

All of these references are discussed in Sverre Boe's Gog and Magog (expect for the last item on Bush), which is great resource, but the online text has a limited preview and printed copies are difficult to come by.

I hope to actively update this list, so lemme know if you've got any sources to add.

1. Bible: Definitively direct references
a) Genesis 10:2
b) 1 Chronicles 1:5
c) 1 Chronicles 5:4 (clearly a reference to a different “Gog”)
d) Ezekiel 38-39
e) Jubilees 7:19, 8:25, 9:7-8
f) Revelations 19:17-21& 20:7-10

2. Bible: Possible direct references
a) Number 24:7: KJV (Agag) vs. Sepuagint (Gog)
b) Deuteronomy 3:1, 3:13, 4:47 (Codex Vaticanus had “Gog”, but was corrected to “Og”, as shown in the linked KJV)
c) Esther 3:1 & 9:24 (one later Sepuagint manuscript has “Gogite” rather than an “Agagite” as shown in the linked KJV)
d) Amos 7:1: KJV vs. Sepuagint (which ends the verse with “And see! One locust is Gog, the king”) (cf, Joel 1-2 "locust motif" and the "prince" in Ezekiel 38-39)
e) Sirach 48:17: the Codex Vaticanus states “brought Gog into its midst” rather than "brought water", – but I cannot find an English translation of the Codex Vaticanus

3. Bible: Passages that may reference, interpret, or retell Ezekiel 38-39
a) 1 Enoch 56:5-8 (allusions to Ezekiel 38-39)
b) Zechariah 7-14 (perhaps read as a retelling of Ezekiel 38-39)
c) Daniel (significant portions may be read as reinterpretations of Ezekiel 38-39)

4. Qur’an (Koran)
a) 18:86 (Yajuj/Yajooj and Majuj/Majooj = Gog and Magog)
b) 21:96

5. Sibylline Oracles Book 3 (The chapter/verse numeration in Boe’s differ from the numeration in this source; here I provide this source's references first--followed by Boe's in parenthesis)
a) 3:393-397 (Boe = 3:319-22)
b) 3:620-656 (Boe = 3:512-513)
c) 795-911? (allusions to Ezekiel 38-39) (Boe = 3,635-731)

6. Qumran (i.e., Essene texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls) (Note: I was unable to find links to English translations of these texts--and quite frankly, I don't even understand what these abbreviations mean)
a) 4QpIsa a 8-10 III:21 (4Q161 8-10 col III:18-25)
b) Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen) XII:12 & XVII:10,16
c) The War Scroll XI:16

7. Targumim (sorry--again, I have no specifics or links)
a) Targum Jonathan to Ezekiel 38-39
b) Targumim to Genesis 10:2
c) Targumim to Number 11:26
d) Targum Jonathan to 1 Samuel 2:10
e) Tg. Ps.-J to Numbers 24:17 and to Exodus 40:11
f) Targumim to Zech 12:10, to Isa 10:32, to Esth 5:1, and to Cant 8:4

8. Various rabbinic compositions (sorry--you guessed it, no specifics or links yet)
a) Targum Jonathan to Ezekiel 38-39
b) Targumim to Genesis 10:2
c) Targumim to Number 11:26
d) Targum Jonathan to 1 Samuel 2:10
e) Tg. Ps.-J to Numbers 24:17, to Exodus 40:11
f) Targumim to Zech 12:10, to Isa 10:32, to Esth 5:1, to Cant 8:4

9. Other
a) Flavius Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter 6, paragraph 1
b) 3 Enoch 45:5 – I could not find The Third Book of Enoch online, but see this (Note: Yajuj/Yajooj and Majuj/Majooj = Gog and Magog)
c) Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (i.e., Pseudo-Philo, or The Biblical Antiquities of Philo) 4:2,4 & 5:4 – Noah’s geneology (see also, this)
d) 1001 Nights, (p.19 in this linked copy) (Yajuj/Yajooj and Majuj/Majooj = Gog and Magog)
e) Marco Polo, (pp 235-236 in this linked copy) (Yajuj/Yajooj and Majuj/Majooj = Gog and Magog)
f) Ronald Reagan, 1971, dinner speech to California state legislators -- Sorry for the unreliable looking source—but know that this same speech is quoted on many other sites, including, in part, Boe’s thesis, which, I will relate here: "In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone Communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly.... For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons."
g) George W. Bush, Jr.

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Footnotes:
(1) Though not specifically said by Freud, please chisel this on my tomb.