BPAL of the Day: Ides of March 05

I finally finished this book Monday. I think I started it around the beginning of May! I bought it on April 14th and I started it after finishing ‘The Language of Bees.’ For a long time I just read it over dinner- often just a page or two at a time. Over the last week or so I have been reading it a lot more and made much more progress.

There is a lot here to talk about. I found this book in the rather 'disreputable' (aliens, conspiracy theories and the like.) end of the new age section at Borders. As such I approached it as inspiration for my fiction, but nothing I was likely to take very seriously. At the beginning it is a little hard to tell just what PoV the author is coming from. I was surprised at the very thoughtful, matter-of-fact treatment of the material. It was obvious that the author was serious about his research, no matter what his purpose for this research turned out to be. From the synopsis I knew that he was tracing the myths put forth in the Book of Enoch about the Watchers of Eden and their 'fall' through revealing the secrets of Heaven to humankind. His goal was to attempt to prove that they were a real advanced race who existed in antediluvian times. But, at the beginning, it was not 100% clear as to what he thought them to be, exactly. Was he trying to prove that they were real life 'sons of god?' Or was it that they were simply an advanced human race that was devastated by catastrophe and disappeared, only to be later remembered as mythological beings? The book's presence in the new age section pointed to the former, but it turned out to be the latter. I'd have taken the book more seriously at the beginning had that been clear earlier.



This book seems very carefully researched. It begins, rather oddly, at the 'end' with the first translations of the Book of Enoch and the stories of the Watchers as put forth there and in The Book of Genesis. From there he traces them (or very similar beings) spoken of in various religions all over the Middle and Near East. Including the Persian story of Zal, a child who reportedly bore the physical resemblance of the daevic race (‘Demonic’- White and ruddy skin, beautiful face, etc. Much the same as the description of the biblical Noah.) He was abandoned for his strangeness and subsequently rescued by a spectacular bird called the 'Simurgh.' The amazing 'bird' apparently had the knowledge of Caesarean sections, anesthesia and advanced medicine long before those things were ever discovered in traditional history books. It speaks of the secretive angel worshipping tribes of the mountains around Lake Van with their serpent and bird imagery and many more ancient myths regarding changelings, bird men, vulture shamanism, serpents, djinn, vampires and giants. The scope of the information given on the related mythologies all over the ancient Middle East is very impressive.

The book also lists archeological sites and places where there are signs of unusually advanced early civilization in and around the Middle East. From the ruins of Catal Huyuk come perfectly polished obsidian mirrors and beads with drilled holes finer than the tiniest drill is capable of today, and the 35 vast underground cities of Cappadocia. These are traditionally given as early Christian hideouts from persecution, but are inexplicably vast, and, as the author points out, it seems mightily nonsensical to go underground to hide from enemy armies. Finally it reaches the apparently 13,000 year old Egyptian settlements where they had finely made scythes and signs of cereal crops and other agriculture, only to have them disappear and later reappear in a much more primitive form thousands of years later. Also the presence of tall skeletons with much larger skulls than the indigenous population of Egypt. These were apparently the richest and most elite of the people, judging by their grave goods.

Eventually the book traces the signs of the 'Watchers' back to Egypt and the increasing likelihood of the Sphinx and some of the other monuments of Giza being of much greater age than previously thought. There is evidence that the Sphinx itself was weathered by *water* not just wind and sand. Egypt was wet around the time of the last ice age and right afterwards. It speaks of the ancient knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes and of the proposed Egyptian Elder culture's fall in the 'Age of Leo'- 10,970 BC-8,810 BC. The book ends with mentions of the survival of fallen angels in modern fiction and of the widespread interest in lost civilizations.

This doesn't scratch the surface of the information contained in this book. It is truly exhaustive in detail. While it seems a little overwhelming, I was never bored with it. It is intensely fascinating material. I got a little exasperated around the middle when it appeared that he was trying to say the culture that produced these ‘fallen angels’ sprouted from the mountains of Kurdistan. Once I learned that was NOT his intention, I started seeing the whole book differently. I think it might have been better if it had started with the Egyptian elder culture and followed their proposed migratory path to finally end at their 'immortalization' as the Watchers of Eden.

While the information of serpents, serpent-men and bird-men of the Middle East are exhaustively explored, the many instances of people/creatures of similar nature in other cultures are only vaguely mentioned at the end of the book. Quetzalcoatl being the first to come to mind. He was the Mesoamerican god known as a white skinned 'feathered serpent' who imparted wisdom and knowledge to them. There are also similar legends among some North American Indian tribes, along with many other ancient serpent, bird, and perhaps even some of the dragon related legends around the world. I was a bit disappointed not to see these other seemingly related myths included, but had he gone into the same kind of detail for ALL of them, the book would have been well over a thousand pages long.

I don’t know if the conclusions reached in this book are correct, but it seems certain that something was happening in ancient times that have yet to be truly explained by any textbook history of the world. I sincerely doubt that every religion and creation myth from every culture all over the world was created strictly from pure fantasy or dramatized observations of nature. There are threads of truth hidden amongst the nonsense and political/cultural agendas that plague most, if not all religions- major and otherwise. Maybe this book found one of those threads. (The author and I hold similar views of organized religion in general. He was definitely not out to prove any single religion’s superiority.)

Maybe the Egyptian elder culture has nothing to do with fallen angels, but I could easily see how a physically and culturally strange race appearing suddenly amidst primitive tribes would be received. They would be seen as monsters or gods. It would likely also be very easy to shift that perception. Some would resent them no matter what good they might have done. They would certainly resent ‘their’ women being ‘taken’ by these strange beings, if that happened. Especially if the women were a lot happier with the knowledgeable and captivating strangers! I can see the tribesmen (and some of the women, too, I am sure) becoming enraged; perhaps tribesmen who had learned just enough from the strangers to set out to destroy them. Maybe they succeeded and later passed on hateful lies about the children of the former tribeswomen and the strangers so that they might all be destroyed as well. Maybe there was a division among the ‘Watchers.’ Perhaps some did believe that they must not intermingle with the primitives (To maintain the purity of their bloodlines? Religious reasons?) And there were others who felt differently. Maybe both of these theories combined created the myths of the ‘Watchers’ as we know them. Whatever happened, there are many, many stories in it. I am rather surprised more hasn’t been written about them. Not just stuff spouting the Enochian view of them as 'evil.' They could so easily be fallen heroes who tried to pass their knowledge to the primitives, only to be vilified for it... far more likely to my mind. (The author sticks to the facts and written accounts from mythological sources and archeological information. The latter are just possibilities that I see.)


I have read a few books that made me look at the world a little differently afterwards and I have to number this one as one of them. I feel some of the conclusions the author came to may have been reaching a little too much, but he certainly made a case for some kind of advanced race in the Middle East region around the time of the last Ice Age. It is certainly more than enough to make one seriously think about it.

**** ½ Stars.