-Caveat Lector- In a message dated 99-10-17 03:56:23 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >Thanks Das, I know you copped all the flak, but just look at what it has >brought out.. The closest most of us have cone to the Sumerian tabs is >Sitchen so you have now opened our eyes a little wider.. There's a ton of good stuff out there, if one doesn't mind taking the time to absorb a lot of (at first) seemingly unconnected details until (finally) one begins to get the hang of a foreign-to-our-way-of-thinking worldview, which of course includes the "mythological." If one survives to THAT point, next there's the adventure of CROSS-REFERENCING such stuff in the meta-context composed of what's believed in MULTIPLE cultures -- for example, even Sitchin hasn't tried to cross-reference the oldest Mesopotamian and Egyptian "mythologies" with the earliest GREEK myths, those described by Hesiod, but <a small accomplishment> I HAVE, and there are insights aplenty in that view ... The "mythologies" of the Teutons, the Mayans, and the post- and pre-Vedic Hindus are still awaiting THEIR "Sitchins," who'll need to immerse themselves totally in an "alien" mindset conditioned by a totally different language and "gloss" (as Castaneda calls it) in order to recognize and value the "strange" (to our minds) as much as the "expected" and the same-old-same-old "familiar" (avoiding the urge to MAKE everything "uniform"). Better to approach unfamiliar territory with an attitude of WONDER, because someone who's too committed to a hypothesis or building up an argument to "prove" a theory will predictably fall into the most common of academic errors: ignoring the incongruous and whatever might CONTRADICT one's pet "system," shoving aside what doesn't "fit" even though those oddities might in fact be the clues to a totally different but more accurate understanding. We Westerners have a strong subconscious drive to "discover" the Same Old Thing in everything foreign and ancient, by projecting our culture's primary assumptions onto just about everything we look at, seeing (again) only OUR "reality." An example is Sigmund Freud, who peered into the "psyche" and found there only a microcosmic image of 19th Century Imperialism, a Social Darwinism of the soul -- in contrast to OTHERS like Jung. In my opinion, Sitchin is promoting a kind of "cosmic" imperialism and colonialism, along with (from his own background) reformulating Old Testament Judaism as a kind of interplanetary Theocracy, with a space-based "Jehovah and his angels" at the helm, playing the same baboon-politics Master/Slave game that Oriental tyrants living in Biblical times exemplified. His mind simply freezes up at the SUBTLETIES of the very facts which from which his system is built up -- for example, what are we to make of the DUALISM (for the Sumerians, two RIVAL gods --Enki and Enlil-- existed, one hostile to mankind, the other benevolent) that made the earth a battlefield for a "war in HEAVEN"? What should we infer from accounts of the KING of the Gods' (Marduk, in later times) selfish USURPATION of power from the Elder Gods, who had earlier ruled more harmoniously over Nature? (Also, underlining the unusual circumstances which were responsible for the Elder Gods DELEGATING power to the "King" of Gods as a "general" during a time of CRISIS -- namely the "threat" provided by the natural forces who were Tiamat's progeny-- WHAT EXACTLY was accomplished by the younger generation of gods' "subduing" and "carving up" Nature writ large, and does this not speak of an IMPRISONMENT of Nature under "divine" (read HUMAN) rule, in which the divinity of Nature is still immanent, "trapped" within the artificial structure of human society?) What do we make of the "Savior" of mankind being an ENEMY of the new God(s) in both the Hebrew religion (archangel Satan, fallen from Heaven with the "Nefilim") and Greek mythology (Prometheus, creator of mankind, founder of culture), with Hebrews "demonizing" him vis-a-vis their INIMICAL God and the Greeks instead REVERING him while scoffing at the petty tyranny of the Olympians and eventually becoming more realistic, rationalistic "atheists"? How do we deal with the fact that both the Egyptians and Mesopotamians honored a dying-and-resurrected god of COMMON people (Osiris, Dumuzi/Tammuz) as an analogy of our "Christ," but blamed the "Devil" Sky-God (analogous to Jehovah) of the Ruling Class, HOSTILE to anything giving hope to slave-humanity, for his death? Why is Gilgamesh, a warlord sovereign half-divine in parentage, portrayed as seeking immortality among the gods and NOT FINDING IT, in the end learning that instead of hoping to TRANSCEND the natural (mortality), he should WELCOME it, like Enkindu? Why is the Sumerian Adapa/Etana, who ascended to Heaven like Enoch, PUNISHED for his hubris instead of being "rewarded" for it (with an implied immortality) like the Hebrew Enoch? In short, there are a great number of DISCREPANCIES in the ur-mythology which Sitchin has presented to readers as an all too PAT picture of "extraterrestrial imperialism, love it or leave it" -- a great disservice to us as a species, if there's any truth to his argument whatsoever ... Let's not make of Sitchin a "prophet" and put him up on an undeserved pedestal for his hypothesis, which is in fact not his ALONE and certainly not even the ONLY hypothesis derivable from the same data -- just read, for example, Brinsley LePoer Trench's books from the '70s, and speculative works like "Genius of a Few" by Christian and Barbara Joy O'Brien, "The Kabbalah Decoded" etc by George Sassoon and Rodney Dale, "The Sirius Mystery" by Robert Temple, and "Gods of the Cataclysm" by Hugh Fox, re-read Velikovsky, read everything you can on Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths PER SE, and then digest it the light of what's only implied in "Hamlet's Mill" by Giorgio de Santillana and made more explicit in Nicholas Campion's "The Great Year," just for starters ... Most of all, don't let yourself get caught up in ONE hypothesis too uncritically, no longer able to analyze it and TEST its validity from within, unable to consider OTHER hypotheses. If you do, you're just buying into somebody else's belief system, your mind UNFREE. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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