THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
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[from http://marlowe.wimsey.com/~rshand/streams/scripts/watchers.html ]

Subject: The Sons of God
                                   
   (1) The Sumerian Watchers
   "...Man and his early civilizations had a profoundly different
   mentality from our own, that in fact men and women were not
   conscious as are we, were not responsible for their actions, and
   therefore cannot be given the credit or blame for anything that
   was done over these vast millennia of time; that instead each
   person had a part of his nervous system that was divine, by which
   he was ordered about like any slave, a voice or voices which
   indeed were what we call volition and empowered what they
   commanded and were related to the hallucinated voices of others
   in a carefully established hierarchy."
   "...The astonishing consistency from Egypt to Peru, from Ur to
   Yucatan, wherever civilizations arose, of death practices and
   idolatry, of divine government and hallucinated voices, all are
   witness to the idea of a different mentality than our own."
   "The gods were in no sense 'figments of the imagination' of
   anyone. They were man's volition. They occupied his nervous
   system, probably his right hemisphere, and from stores of
   admonitory and receptive experience, transmuted this experience
   into articulated speech which then 'told' the man what to do."
   
   "Throughout Mesopotamia, from the earliest times of Sumer and
   Akkad, all lands were owned by gods and men were their slaves. Of
   this, the cuneiform texts leave no doubt whatever. Each
   city-state had its own principal god, and the king was described
   in the very earliest written documents that we have as 'the
   tenant farmer of the god'."
   - Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
   the Bicameral Mind
   
   "... The Akkadians called their predecessors Shukmerians, and
   spoke of the Land of Shumer.
   "It was, in fact, the biblical Land of Shin'ar. It was the land
   whose name - Shumer - literally meant the Land of the Watchers.
   It was indeed the Egyptian Ta Neter - Land of the Watchers, the
   land from which the gods had come to Egypt."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven
   
   "It was from that planet [Nibiru], the Sumerian texts repeatedly
   and persistently stated, that the Anunnaki came to Earth. The
   term literally means 'Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came.' They
   are spoken of in the Bible as the Anakim, and in Chapter 6 of
   Genesis are also call Nefilim, which in Hebrew means the same
   thing: Those Who Have Come Down, from the Heavens to Earth."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, Genesis Revisited
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   (2) The Egyptian Ntr
   
   There is archaeological evidence of a strong cultural connection
   between Sumer and ancient Egypt.
   
   "Ptah and the other gods were called, in Egyptian, Ntr -
   'Guardian, Watcher'."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, The Wars of Gods and Men
   
   During the fabled "First Time, Zep Tepi, when the gods ruled in
   their country: they said it was a golden age during which the
   waters of the abyss receded, the primordial darkness was
   banished, and humanity, emerging into the light, was offered the
   gifts of civilization. They spoke also of intermediaries between
   gods and men - the Urshu, a category of lesser divinities whose
   title meant 'the Watchers'. And they preserved particularly vivid
   recollections of the gods themselves, puissant and beautiful
   beings called the Neteru who lived on earth with humankind and
   exercised their sovereignty from Heliopolis and other sanctuaries
   up and down the Nile. Some of these Neteru were male and some
   female but all possessed a range of supernatural powers which
   included the ability to appear, at will, as men or women, or as
   animals, birds, reptiles, trees or plants. Paradoxically, their
   words and deeds seem to have reflected human passions and
   preoccupations. Likewise, although they were portrayed as
   stronger and more intelligent than humans, it was believed that
   they could grow sick - or even die, or be killed - under certain
   circumstance."
   - Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods
   
     "'Deliver thou the scribe Nebseni, whose word is truth, from
     the Watchers, who carry murderous knives, who possess cruel
     fingers, and who would slay those who are in the following of
     Osiris.'
     May these Watchers never gain the mastery over me, and may I
     never fall under their knives!'
     
     "Who are these Watchers?
     
     "'They are Anubis and Horus, [the latter being] in the form of
     Horus the sightless. Others, however, say that they are the
     Tchatcha (sovereign princes of Osiris), who bring to nought
     the operations of their knives; and others say that they are
     the chiefs of the Sheniu chamber.
     'May their knives never gain the mastery over me. May I never
     fall under the knives wherewith they inflict cruel tortures.
     For I know their names, and I know the being, Matchet, who is
     among them in the House of Osiris. He shooteth forth rays of
     light from his eye, being himself invisible, and he goeth
     round about heaven robed in the flames which come from his
     mouth, commanding Hapi, but remaining invisible himself. May I
     be strong on earth before Ra, may I arrive safely in the
     presence of Osiris. O ye who preside over your altars, let not
     your offerings to me be wanting, for I am one of those who
     follow after Nebertcher, according to the writings of Khepera.
     Let me fly like a hawk, let me cackle like a goose, let me lay
     always like the serpent-goddess Neheb-ka.'"
     - The Egyptian Book of the Dead
     
   "They had come to Egypt, the Egyptians wrote, from Ta-Ur, the
   'Far/Foreign Land,' whose name Ur meant 'oldest' but could have
   also been the actual place name - a place will known from
   Mesopotamian and biblical records: the ancient city of Ur in
   southern Mesopotamia. And the straits of the Red Sea, which
   connected Mesopotamia and Egypt, were called Ta-Neter, the 'Place
   of the Gods,' the passage by which they had come to Egypt. That
   the earliest gods did come from the biblical lands of Shem is
   additionally borne out by the puzzling fact that the names of
   these olden gods were of 'Semitic' (Akkadian) derivation. Thus
   Ptah, which had no meaning in Egyptian, meant 'he who fashioned
   things by carving and opening up' in the Semitic tongues."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, The Wars of Gods and Men
   
   "The Legend of Votan, who had built the first city that was the
   cradle of Mesoamerican civilization, was written down by Spanish
   chroniclers from oral Mayan traditions. The emblem of Votan, they
   recorded, was the serpent; 'he was a descendant of the Guardians,
   of the race of Can'. 'Guardians' was the meaning of the Egyptian
   term Neteru (i.e., 'gods'). Can, studies such as that by Zelia
   Nuttal (Papers of the Peabody Museum) have suggested was a
   variant of Canaan who was (according to the Bible) a member of
   the Hamitic peoples of Africa and a brother-nation of the
   Egyptians."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began
     ____________________________________________________________
   
   (3) Bene Elohim
   
   "The sons of God (or children of God; 'bene elohim' and variants)
   are divine members of God's heavenly host...The title
   'sons/children of God' is familiar from Ugaritic mythology, in
   which the gods collectively are the 'children of Enoch wrote of
   his spell-binding journey to heaven where he saw angels and their
   glory.
   
     "And these are the names of the holy angels who watch. Uriel,
     one of the holy angels, who is over the world and over
     Tartarus. Raphael, one of the holy angels, who is over the
     spirits of men. Raguel, one of the holy angels who takes
     vengeance on the world of the luminaries. Michael, one of the
     holy angels, to wit, he that is set over the best part of
     mankind and over chaos. Saraqael, one of the holy angels, who
     is set over the spirits, who sin in the spirit. Gabriel, one
     of the holy angels, who is over Paradise and the serpents and
     the Cherubim. Remiel, one of the holy angels, whom God set
     over those who rise."
     - 1 Enoch 20:1-8
     
   The First Book of Enoch was the first piece of Jewish literature
   to describe a class of angels, the Watchers, who are positively
   evil and who lead the dead to a place of eternal torment.
   
     "And all the angels shall execute their commandst
     And shall seek to hide themselves from the presence of the
     Great Glory,
     And the children of earth shall tremble and quake;
     And ye sinners shall be cursed for ever,
     And ye shall have no peace."
     - 1 Enoch 102:3
     
   The Book of Jubilees "was also known in early times as the
   Apocalypse of Moses, for it allegedly was written down by Moses
   at Mount Sinai as an angel dictated to him the histories of days
   past. (Scholars, though, believe that the work was composed in
   the second century BC)."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven
   
     "For in his days the angels of the Lord descended upon earth -
     those who are named The Watchers - that they should instruct
     the children of men, that they should do judgment and
     uprightness upon earth."
     - The Book of Jubilees
     
   "According to the Book of Jubilees, the Watchers are the sons of
   god (Genesis 6) sent from heaven to instruct the children of men;
   they fell after they descended to earth and cohabited with the
   daughters of men - for which act they were condemned (so legend
   reports) and became fallen angels. But not all Watchers
   descended: those that remained are the holy Watchers, and they
   reside in the 5th Heaven. The evil Watchers dwell either in the
   3rd Heaven or in Hell."
   - A Dictionary of Angels
   
   "According to the Book of Jubilees, Enoch...testified about the
   Watchers who had sinned with the daughters of men; he testified
   against them all." And it was to protect him from the revenge of
   the sinning angels of the Lord, that 'he was taken from amongst
   the children of men, and was conducted into the Garden of Eden."
   - Zecharia Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven
   
     "And I Enoch was blessing the Lord of majesty and the King of
     the ages, and lo! the Watchers called me -Enoch the scribe-
     and said to me: 'Enoch, thou scribe of righteousness, go,
     declare to the Watchers of the heaven who have left the high
     heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves
     with women, and have done as the children of earth do, and
     have taken unto themselves wives: "Ye have wrought great
     destruction on the earth: And ye shall have no peace nor
     forgiveness of sin: and inasmuch as they delight themselves in
     their children, The murder of their beloved ones shall they
     see, and over the destruction of their children shall they
     lament, and shall make supplication unto eternity, but mercy
     and peace shall ye not attain".'"
     - 1 Enoch 10:3-8
     
   As recounted in the Dead Sea Scrolls, "200 angels known as 'the
   Watchers' once descended from heaven to sample the pleasures of
   earth. In time, each of the 200 took an earthly spouse. These
   unions produced children of extraordinary size, who quickly
   devoured the world's food. To satisfy their enormous appetites,
   the angel-children roamed the earth, slaughtering every species
   of bird, beast, reptile and fish. Finally, the ravenous creatures
   turned on one another, stripping flesh from the bones of their
   fellows and slaking their thirst in rivers of blood. As this wave
   of destruction washed over the earth, the anguished cries of
   humankind reached four powerful archangels - Uriel, Raphael,
   Gabriel, and Michael - who upon orders from God enacted a swift
   retribution. First Uriel descended to earth to warn Noah of a
   coming deluge, advising him to prepare an ark to carry his family
   and a menagerie of creatures to safety. Raphael then fell upon
   the leader of the Watchers, bound him hand and foot, and thrust
   him into eternal darkness. Next, Gabriel charged with slaying the
   dissenters' offspring, encouraged the monstrous angel-children to
   fight one another. Finally, Michael trussed up the remaining
   Watchers, forced them to witness the deaths of their progeny, and
   condemned them to eternal torment. Only then did the heavens open
   up and wash away the last traces of the destruction that the
   fallen angels had wrought."
   - Cosmic Duality
   
     "I saw Watchers in my vision, the dream-vision. Two (men) were
     fighting over me, saying...and holding a great contest over
     me. I asked them, 'Who are you, that you are thus empo[wered
     over me?' They answered me, 'We] [have been em]powered and
     rule over all mankind'. They said to me, 'Which of us do yo[u
     choose to rule (you)?' I raised my eyes and looked.] [One] of
     them was terri]fying in his appearance, [like a s]erpent,
     [his] cl[oa]k many-colored yet very dark...[And I looked
     again], and...in his appearance, his visage like a viper, and
     [wearing...] [exceedingly, and all his eyes...]" "[I replied
     to him,] 'This [Watcher,] so is he?' He answered me, 'This
     Wa[tcher...] [and his three names are Belial and Prince of
     Darkness] and King of Evil.'"
     - "Testament of Amram" (4Q535, Manuscript B)
     
   "These spirits were locked away in the earth, but Mastema
   persuaded God to keep out one in ten to tempt humanity until the
   judgement and to commit all forms of transgression.
   "In the Day of Judgement all such spirits will be consigned to
   eternal torment and humanity renewed in spirit back to the
   generations of Adam:
   
     'And the days will begin to grow many and increase amongst the
     children of men till their days draw night to a thousand years
     ...
     And there will be no old man ...For all will be as children
     and youths.'
     
   "The Tree of Life, fragrant and wonderful to behold will be
   returned to the centre ground, and the New Jerusalem will be
   built by God - just as later described in Revelation."
   - Chris King, "The Apocalyptic Tradition"
   
   Jewish religious authorities, concerned that the growing worship
   of angels would be a threat to the belief in one God, excised
   works like that of Enoch and Book of Jubilees from canonical
   literature, making them part of what is now known as the
   Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.
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