Murdoch Retrograde

Most of what there is to say about the Rupert Murdoch "do" has been said, ad nauseam.

For any not already bored by it all there's an interesting thread, with charts, on the topic at Bristol & Bath Astrologers' Forum: http://bristolbathastrologers.ning.com/forum/topics/rupert-murdoch-news


However, Fry & Laurie, (Stephen Fry, and Hugh Laurie lately of House) at the BBC had a bit to say about it, in advance....in 1995 !

Monday Movies ~ Polar opposite tales: Bloodworth and The Company Men

Last weekend, without realising it at the time, the two movies I chose to rent had characters, locations and storylines which were exact polar opposites: Bloodworth and The Company Men. Both are fairly recent releases, neither had reached our local cinema. I chose them purely because of the actors involved: Kris Kristofferson (long time favourite singer, writer, actor), in Bloodworth; Tommy Lee Jones (long time favourite actor) in The Company Men.

The two storylines depict aspects of life in today's USA, throwing into strong relief stark variations existing here, in different areas, different layers of poverty and wealth, and in different ways of dealing with the circumstances into which a person can find themself due to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune".

For astrologically interested passing readers, I've already posted notes on natal charts of Kris Kristofferson HERE, and Tommy Lee Jones (HERE). Another excellent actor from Company Men, Chris Cooper's natal chart has been investigated by me HERE.

In Bloodworth we peer into life in deepest Tennessee, even though the movie was shot in North Carolina. The film is an adaptation of a novel, Provinces of Night, by southern gothic author William Gay. Kristofferson plays the long absent patriarch of the family Bloodworth, who tries to return to the rancid bosom of his family after suffering a stroke. He left home, wife and three sons 40 years earlier for a mysterious reason only hinted at in flashback. In his long absence the family hasn't prospered. Wife has gone dotty, one son isn't far behind her, another son has become a sleazy country music producer in Nashville (Val Kilmer gamely hamming it up), the third son, as we meet him, is seeking a wife who has absconded, he's a less than attentive fatherly presence to his young son Fleming, played by Reece Thompson.



When Grandpa arrives, Fleming, high school drop out, but aspiring writer, is the only family member to offer assistance and friendship to the old guy, played perhaps rather too sympathetically by Kristofferson.

The cinematography is one of the best things - lovely atmospheric scenes and colours. I suspect the book might fill in many of the blanks left in the movie, which starts at an appropriately southern languid pace, but steps up to a sweaty canter at the end, making what was originally a believable tale seem overly contrived.

Scenes from Bloodworth remained in memory though - so the film makers must have done something right.


The Company Men - set in a polar opposite location to rural Tennessee: urban Boston. Featuring polar opposite personalities from those seen in Bloodworth: urban corporate men living what used to be called The American Dream - in huge houses filled with every luxury imaginable, Porche cars, spoiled wives and offspring, living lives the like of which Bloodworths had not ever even dreamed about. The script is by John Wells, TV writer, director, producer, known best for ER and West Wing.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a rather dour (of course) Gene McClary co-founder of a now major and up to now successful corporation, originally shipbuilders but currently with fingers in all manner of pies. 21st century disease of "downsizing" and redundancies hovers over the corporation as the movie begins, and spreads its infection rapidly. One of the first of the upper echelons of employees to go is Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), VP of sales department, mid-thirties husband and father living high off the hog; doesn't deal at all well with changed circumstances. His wife, a nurse, keeps the family ship from sinking altogether. Phil Woodward (the excellent Chris Cooper), a guy who has been with the company from its earliest days, rising from shop floor level to middle management, now nearing 60 and now jobless.




Last to go, outspoken co-founder Gene McClary gets the chop by his cold-hearted partner, for daring to criticise continued desecration of their company in order to placate a deity of shareholders. I couldn't help relating what went on in these scenes to ancient sacrificial offerings to the gods of old.

The movie describes how each man deals with his changed circumstances.
It's a deadly serious movie - no laughs at all. Performances by the three leads are strong and believable as is Kevin Costner's out of norm character turn as Affleck's grumpy but well-meaning brother-in-law who runs his own small construction firm, also not in the best of straits, but keeping going under difficult circumstances in order to keep his guys in employment. A sharp reminder that small businesses too feel the pinch, but small businessmen are human, with a heart, wereas corporations are money-making machines, without a heart.

In both Bloodworth and Company Men there's a light at the end of a dark tunnel, but only in the closing scenes.

An oddity I realised while drafting this post: In Bloodworth character actor Barry Corbin played a minor but beautifully drawn part as owner of a run-down rural bar; in Company Men I saw Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper. All three actors all had main roles in one of my all-time favourite TV mini-series, Lonesome Dove. Tommy was Captain Woodrow Call, Chris Cooper was July Johnson (and will always be remembered so by me), and Barry Corbin was Roscoe Brown. Three wonderful actors, none of whom (even Tommy L.J.) has ever received fully the acclaim they deserve.

WEEKEND GRAB BAG ~ TIME

Some detail from a book by Robert FitzGerald: Signs of the Times are available via the link. The author divides astrological Ages into more accessible bite-sized chunks called Eras and Phases.

At present we are in transit through the Age of Pisces. By this author's calculation the Aquarius Era of the Pisces Age ran from 1800 to 1980 - which could well account for some astrolgers' insistence that we were already in the Age of Aquarius.

Then, dividing time into even smaller slices, 1950 to 1965 becomes the Aquarius Phase of the Aquarius Era of the Age of Pisces....that slice includes the psychedlic 60s - thought to be quite Aquarian, so with a double dose of Aquarius: phase and era, it was.... with a background of Pisces dreaminess.

1965 to 1980 = Pisces Phase, Aquarius Era, Age of Pisces.

From 1980 to 2160 is the Pisces Era of the Age of Pisces and we are presently in the Gemini Phase - 2010 to 2025 of the Pisces Era of the Age of Pisces.

The Cancer Phase will be 2025 to 2040.

For a brief rundown on what this means, and comparisons with similar eras and phases throughout history, do take a look at the website, linked above.

All that can really be said is that at some indeterminate point in the very distant past, for reasons unknown, there came the moment known to science as t = 0. We were on our way.
(Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, p.10)

From http://www.timephysics.com/

MEASURING TIME

Be it money, weight, a piece of estate, speed, distance or resistance. We measure by comparison to a standard that we have defined. When we measure a mass we use a standard mass like KG or LB for comparison. Distances we measure using a standard of length like a meter yard or feet. Keeping the above in mind let us think how we measure motion. We use time to measure motion i.e. Feet per second or miles per hour. This provides a hint that when dealing with time we are actually dealing with some standard of motion.

We may have made the concept of time more complicated then what it really is. Measurement of time started early on in human development. There are plenty of clues in every language in the greetings and the meetings. Time of the day is related to the position of sun in the sky or its absence thereof. There is dawn, sunrise, early morning, morning, mid morning, noon, afternoon, late afternoon, evening, sunset, dusk, night and mid night. Then there are years, months, weeks, based on earth’s yearly orbit around the sun and the changing seasons. The use of units like seconds and minutes which are radial angle measurements in geometry points toward the original connection of time measurements to radial motion of astronomical objects across the sky. Once we started using clocks, watches, and then digital time we got completely disconnected from the original method of measurement and time developed a life of its own.

The problem of time may be easy to solve if we go back to the original concept of sun moving across the sky. When we measure the speed of a car, we are just comparing its motion to the motion of the hands of the clock and also indirectly to the fractional motion of sun across the sky. We are not measuring speed with something abstract called time we are just comparing a known motion (of the sun) with an unknown motion of the car.

Time is making fools of us again. ~J.K. Rowling

One from a list of crazy watches;
Relativity watch
Modeled on Einstein's theory of relativity, this Relativity Watch actually makes the numbers move instead of the hands. This, of course, makes you dizzy if you continuously stare at it for more than 12 hours.

(A thought: The movement of this watch somehow seems more akin to the movement of the planets.)

Aside from velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe. You can't see it or touch it, yet a plumber can charge you upwards of seventy-five dollars per hour for it, without necessarily fixing anything.
— Dave Barry

The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.

Time is a wealth of change,
but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time
like dew on the tip of a leaf.

(Rabindranath Tagore).

Rain-chanting at Full Thunder Moon

We're hoping that tomorrow's Full Moon, at 22.28 degrees of Capricorn, known by Native Americans as Full Thunder Moon, will bring with it some rain accompanying any thunder, to break our extreme drought conditions. Moon will be at less than a degree from my natal Mercury - perhaps I should do a rain dance or, perhaps a more truly Mercurial, rain chant?








Full Moon names date back to Native Americans, of what is now the northern and eastern United States. The tribes kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full Moon.

The FullThunder/Full Buck Moon/Full Hay Moon – July : normally the month when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur. It was also often called the Full Thunder Moon, for the reason that thunderstorms are most frequent during this time. Another name for this month’s Moon was the Full Hay Moon.
Farmers' Almanac

Staying with the "thunder" motif, across many North America indigenous cultures, the Thunderbird is described as a large bird, capable of creating storms and thundering while it flies. Clouds are pulled together by its wingbeats, the sound of thunder made by its wings clapping, sheet lightning the light flashing from its eyes when it blinks, and individual lightning bolts made by the glowing snakes that it carries around with it. In masks, it is depicted as many-colored, with two curling horns, and, often, teeth within its beak. The Native Americans believed that the giant Thunderbird could shoot lightning from its eyes. (Wikipedia)

So...instead of me rain-chanting tunelessly how about Nina Simone with Randy Newman's I Think It's Gonna Rain Today, and Jane Morgan with a song from the 1950s: The Day the Rains Came Down.

Might do the trick. Can't hurt to try!

Through clearing fog....President Obama

Did any astrologer "see" the real Barack Obama in the run up to the 2008 election, or during the weeks immediately following? I was beginning to doubt it when I stumbled across this, fairly brief, Obama astro-profile written in 2008 by astrologer Hunter Reynolds: Barack Obama’s astrology chart: “Grace in a Cracked Vessel”
Snips:

When I stare at the symbolic map of his psyche and consider his unique blessings and blind spots, I am sobered. He — like all of us — is a cracked vessel........

To the extent that he uses his charisma for self-aggrandizement instead of advocating for those whose suffering he feels as his own, his ambition becomes his undoing.

Minus the cathartic, body-reclaiming routines of basketball and regular workouts, his articulate activism could easily slip into provocative impatience; his altruistic passion could degenerate into dominating others "for their own good."

This much is certain: Barak is a born representative. He is both qualified and cursed to serve as a the face of our collective ego, for on the breath of his luminous presence is a trace of nicotine—a whiff of our own secret shame.

Hunter Reynolds' website is Astrodharma, by the way.

Did anybody else see the real Obama? From what they're saying now, a few amateur political commentators who have been marinated in US politics for most of their adult lives did. Apparently they tried vainly to pass on the knowledge to the rest of us, who were too busy Yes We Can-ing to listen.

I wasn't that busy chanting, to be honest. Having achieved US citizenship in 2008, just in time to register for voting, I registered Independent, and started by supporting the single candidate saying the things I wanted to hear: Dennis Kucinich. He was pretty much ignored or worse, ridiculed. He withdrew. I wondered about John Edwards, then Hillary, but eventually just went with the crowd and Obama. I really thought him too inexperienced to be taking on such a huge job, made even more huge by Prez G.W. Bush's 8-year stint. I had no inkling things were going to turn out this bad, though. None. I have always felt that there's a aura of mystery around Obama. In astro-terms he's very Neptuney, and has turned out to be a shape-shifter extraordinaire.

The real Obama hove into view some months ago, for those of us who are straining to peer through the slowly clearing Neptune fog.

One of my favourite political commentators, Prof. David Michael Green, associate professor of Political Science at Hofstra University, located in Hempstead, New York, wrote a brilliant essay at the weekend: "Stupid Democrats, Stupid Republicans", it outlines the present situation wonderfully well. The full, long essay can be read at Prof. Green's website The Regressive Antidote.

Extracts:

The thing about Obama that neither Democrats nor Republicans understand is that this guy is fundamentally regressive in his politics. That is the essence of his presidency, though – astonishingly – very few people get that. Look at the litany of issues addressed above. If you honestly asked yourself for each of them what, in the abstract, would a progressive president do, and what would a regressive president do, you can immediately decipher the true nature of Barack Obama. A progressive president wouldn’t triple American forces in Afghanistan and launch three new wars abroad, but a regressive president would. A progressive president wouldn’t out-do Dick Cheney in wrecking the Bill of Rights, but a regressive president would. A progressive president wouldn’t follow behind the lead of Republicans on civil rights issues, but a regressive president would.

And that’s just what this regressive president has done, all down the line. Never mind that we’re just getting started here. We could go on and on with this, issue after issue. What do you think a regressive president would do about the planetary nightmare of global warming? Nothing, perhaps? Gee, does that sound familiar? How about giving out unprecedentedly gigantic oil tracts off the Atlantic coast? Or multiple rounds of additional tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy? Hey, where have I heard that before? Even Obama’s signature ‘liberal’ issue, his health care plan, was just dandy from the perspective of the insurance industry, with whom he cut a deal at the very beginning of the legislative process......

Democrats are stupid about this. They still mostly like Obama, to the tune of about 75-80 percent job approval, though they might grumble here and there about this or that perceived failing of the president’s. It is a measure of their abysmally low standards and our pathetic national political discourse that policies like Obama’s can satisfy his base, so much so that he won’t even face a primary challenger from his left........

These attitudes are also a measure of bias as well, or what one might describe as a sort of political tribalism of the uninformed........

Why? I suppose some of it is because he’s black. And some of it is because he’s young and articulate and energetic and photogenic. Mostly, though, I think it’s because he’s a Democrat, and people are so tuned out from public affairs – despite what public affairs policy decisions are doing to their lives right now – that they simply go with that in-group vs. out-group rubric: “Democrat good, Republican bad”. Chances are they got that from their families and communities, along with their religion and nationalism and so on. Of course, to a certain extent, one of the key functions of political parties has always been simply to serve as precisely that sort of short-hand...... But there is a point at which such guiding assistance can cross a line into negligent laziness. More importantly, as in our time, there is a very real danger that today’s Democrat is far from being your father’s Democrat. At which point, using party labels to make otherwise blind decisions about politics becomes not just laziness or negligence, but complicity in a crime. And a crime where you’re one of the victims, no less.........................

In short, Democratic support and defense of Barack Obama is a sad joke. This guy is no liberal. He is, in fact, using liberal votes to join the Gingriches and Cheneys and Palins of this world in the project of destroying liberalism and its great achievement of massively widening the middle class and sharing national prosperity. Hey, not a bad gig, if you don’t mind the whole cynicism part, and the whole spending eternity in Hell thing.

.............It’s not a good sign when so many people – basically all of us – have politics which are so flat-out wrong. And if these feel like the worst of times politically in America, that is not such an exaggerated perception, notwithstanding the country’s more overt crises throughout the past two or three centuries...... There are significant differences now, however......... our body politic is so diminished that it can no longer recognize basic political facts anymore. Nothing is more emblematic of that than the case of Barack Obama. Democrats love him for being a good old liberal Democrat. Republicans hate him for the same reason. Both are so politically dumbed-down that neither can recognize how absurdly wrong they are on such a central question as the politics of the country’s chief executive.

But, of course, the biggest single problem facing the polity is that nobody is talking about the biggest single problem facing the polity. The country has been hijacked by hyper-greedy elites, who have demonstrated that there is absolutely no bottom to what they are willing to do to the rest of us, and to the country, to milk it and bilk it of every last remaining penny of value..........

A Ramsussen poll from March 2011 found that "Most voters think President Obama is more liberal than they are" - which says a lot about the level of critical thinking of a majority of people in the USA! Or, alternatively, about the rot at the heart of this nation, where the majority don't give a damn about what is happening to their fellows. Take your pick - either way it's not pretty!

This morning it seems Keith Olbermann too has seen the light - or the darkness surrounding the president.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/12/keith-olbermann-obama-social-security-medicare_n_895420.html

Monday Movie ~ Barney's Version

We rented a DVD of the movie Barney's Version last weekend. I'd been waiting for release of the DVD since reading about the film, which never made it to within 200 miles of our town.

Anything involving Paul Giamatti is a must-see for yours truly. He won a Golden Globe for this performance, but was passed over at the Oscars, possibly due to all the PR noise about The King's Speech. He's one of the best actors there is -arguably THE best. I enjoy, but am not overly impressed by De Niro, Colin Farrell, Jack Nicholson, et al, and actively dislike Tom Hanks (yes, I'm the one). Paul Giamatti plays the impossible roles, but makes them believable. Nicholas Cage, the other actor who plays impossible roles, makes them unbelievable.

Being a fan of Giamatti I've already posted on his natal chart HERE.
- He has Sun in Gemini by the way.

Barney's Version is an adaptation of the novel by Mordecai Richler. I haven't read the book, and am wary of doing so now in case it spoils the movie (reverse of the usual sentiment).

I notice that Richler was born on 27 January, same day as me - earlier year though. He died in 2001. Canadian and Jewish by birth, he was known for his acerbic (note: Saturn close to Mercury in Capricorn) yet comic tone, fascination with the absurdity of life and human nature - all of which come through clearly in Barney's Version - last of his 10 novels.

My husband had read the novel, and was able to clarify the rather mysterious clue thrown in during the final sequence. I'll say no more about that so as not to spoil it for others. The movie's theme, in a nutshell, is a 30-or-so year trawl through the life and loves of Barney Panofsky, who some might perceive as the consummate douchebag. Due to Paul Giamatti's kindly "aura" which I could not completely block out, I saw a risk-taking guy, loyal to his good friends, aware of his responsibilities, yet unable to supress an abiding romanticism. The die-hard romantic in him led him to fall in love at first sight with a guest at his second wedding!


He could also be curmudgeonly, awkward and selfish - yet always vulnerable (Giamatti does that so well!) Barney married three times, and divorced three times - not a particularly unusual pattern for someone in the entertainment industry as he was - producer of a tacky Canadian TV series. The colourful characters involved are what put Barney's story apart from the norm.



Scenes cover timelines and locations from 1970s bohemian Rome (in the novel I understand it's Paris), to New York and Montreal in the late 1990s. One of Barney's best friends from their bohemian days provides the mystery element in the movie, not solved until the final scene.....which had to be explained to me by well-read husband!

Female stars: Barney's wives are played by Rachelle Lefevre, Minnie Driver and Rosamund Pike. Dustin Hoffman plays Barney's father - brilliant little sketch: rough diamond of a Jewish ex-cop!





Hoffman's real-life son, Jake, plays Barney's son, and though there's no resemblance to Barney, there's plenty of likeness to Barney's Dad - naturally!

Good movie - great acting.

WEEKEND GRAB BAG

Adam Weishaupt, German philosopher who is credited with founding (in Bavaria at least) The Order of Illuminati, had Sun, north node of Moon, Uranus, Mercury and Jupiter all in Aquarius between 3 and 17 degrees. Born 6 February 1748. His name comes up frequently in arguments about an alleged New World Order - which I guess is supposed to be brainchild of the successors of the Illuminati. Stated original aims of The Illuminati were to abolish monarchies and ordered governments, abolition of private property and inheritances, abolition of patriotism and nationalism, abolition of family life and the institution of marriage, and the establishment of communal education of children; abolition of all religion. Tall order! Quite Aquarian though! Weishaupt, it appears, was responsible for drawing the Freemasons into the Illuminati mix. These days, NWO seems to me to be more aligned with greed for wealth and power, things I'd not readily equate with the sign Aquarius, whatever its faults.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
~ Aristotle

Some years ago Jeffrey Kishner wrote about Jack Black in his (then) blog Astrology at the Movies. I posted about JB myself in 2007, quoting from Mr Kishner's piece. Black's birthdate was in question at that time. I came across my archived post and got to wondering whether the confusion over his date of birth had been cleared up in the intervening years. It seems not.

Internet sources give Jack Black's date of birth as either 28 August 1969 or 7 April 1969. Two dates not similar enough to have come about via a slip of someone's pen or typing fingers. The source for the 28 August 1969 date given by Wikipedia is a CBS news programme of 2003. They do not supply a source for their information. I can find no evidence at all from whence the 7 April date came.

Perhaps Jack Black at some point fed false information to the press? In interview he has said that he has no belief in astrology "and all that crap". One source states that Jack Black is a stage name, and he has "long refused to reveal his real name". I'm beginning to wonder whether either of the birth dates available are correct, if Mr Black is so keen to "keep himself to himself"! Who could blame him - really?

Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!"
~ David Sedaris (from Me Talk Pretty One Day)

Dame Diana Rigg and Natalie Wood were both born on July 20, 1938.

As I may or may not say to the Lord on Judgment Day, "You ask a lot of questions for someone who has so much explaining to do."
~Robert Brault

Humour/Humor ~ Astrology

Huffington Post yesterday published a slideshow of "Our Favourite UK Comedians"....."Our" presumably meaning USA-ans.

There were omissions, some rectified by commenters. I got to thinking that many of those comedians pictured and named owe a debt of gratitude to forerunners from a preceding generation, about whom people in the USA are completely oblivious. Some such names are already disappearing into the mists of time, even in the UK: - Arthur Askey, Tommy Handley, Ted Ray, Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd, Beryl Reid, Kenneth Horne, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Williams -- and, by the way I didn't see Ken Dodd's name even among the comments....and I think he's still with us.

Humour. It's good to see the gap between British and USA humour narrowing. It was often said in the past that Brits didn't "get" US humour and vice versa. TV, the internet and internetional travel have gone a long way towards closing that gap.

Humour defies definition, like beauty it's in the eye or ear of the beholder. Astrologers have tried to isolate it in natal charts. 20th century British astrologer C.E.O. Carter had this to say about humour in his "Encyclopedia of Psychological Astrology":

HUMOUR

"Each sign has its special kind, but the general astrological indications of this gift are Venus and Taurus, Jupiter, Neptune, Sagittarius and Pisces; Moon, Cancer and Uranus. Humour in the strict sense, I put under the Moon and Cancer.

Venus and Taurus seem to have to do with laughter and amusement generally; Moon, Neptune and their signs with whimsicality (which is also noticeable in many Virginians (I think we usually call 'em Virgoans these days!), Uranus with incongruity and unexpected effects; Jupiter and Sagittarius with fun and satire. Mercury must, of course, be prominent where the power of humorous expression is involved. Humourous persons, unlike witty ones, have not always the gift of speech.

Wit depends upon a strong Mercury, the quality of wit being determined by the chief aspecting planet........ The signs which most commonly lack humour are Leo, Scorpio and Capricorn, as these often produce persons with a strong case of personal dignity, not to say self importance. They can seldom appreciate a joke at their own expense, as the Jupiter person can. It is probable that Saturn afflictions to the Moon tend to destroy humour, while Martian ones coarsen it, and incline to horseplay."

I don't agree with everything Mr. Carter wrote there. He appears to separate wit from humour, so perhaps that's where I find conflict. I see wit and humour as indivisible, part and parcel of the same thing, and I don't get the link to Cancer at all.

I certainly don't see Capricorn as lacking in humour. Strong Capricorn in a natal chart can bring forth very dry wit, a droll turn of phrase, and while they may not be into a roll-on-floor-laughing type of humour, they're in no way devoid of fun. His listing of Leo as lacking in this respect is rather odd. Leo's draw to entertain others, love of the limelight will quite often go along with a fine sense of the ridiculous and good comic timing - possibly not the most sophisticated of humourous styles, but certainly not lacking - unless the natal chart has much strong in conflict with Leo planets.

Our natal charts are webs of connections, mixtures, blends and conflicts, it is no straightforward matter to see humour, or lack of it, there.

The Mysterious Nephilim

I took off on another of those rabbit-hole excursions into Google the other day. This time I had a bee in my bonnet (from whence it came I know not) about the Nephilim, as documented in translations of the Old Testament, and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls or Qumran Texts, Book of Enoch, Jubilees, and others.

Genesis 6:1-4
When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days - and also afterward - when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Genesis 7:23
Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
Numbers 13:33
"We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."

Much may have been lost in translation, including a clear description of the characteristics of Nephilim. Translated as "giants" in some Bible versions, the word is nervously left as "Nephilim" in others. "Giant" could refer to either physical stature or mental prowess; some translators believe it meant "those who fell"(as in fallen angels) but, whatever it truly meant, it indicated a clear difference of Nephilim from the average human abroad on Earth at the time.

The Bible story goes that the "sons of God" or "Watchers" sent by God to watch over events on earth, on seeing beautiful female humans desired them, mated with them. Resulting offspring = Nephilim....beings who were in some way "giant", mentally or physically. Some commentators see this reported inter-breeding as representing some tribal inter-breeding - between the "sons of God" (sons of the godly Seth's line) and (ungodly) daughters of Cain. Others surmise that it might refer to the interbreeding of a more highly developed human species with primitive Neanderthals. It depends how the word Nephilim is translated and understood, and, of course, whether one believes in the existence of angels - or indeed, God. The story could be looked on as an allegory of sorts, recorded to preserve the core of some ancient knowledge, not even properly understood by the scribes who recorded it.

"The rout of the fallen angels", illustration to Milton's "Paradise Lost" by William Blake

We'll never know the true significance of this mystery.



Enter Astrology?
Earlier mystical Hebrew sects organized the 'watchers' into an archangel hierarchy. According to this system the 'watchers' were ruled over by four great 'watchers' known as Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Auriel. In the Apocryphal Books of Enoch and Jubilees, the 'watchers' were sent to Earth to teach law and justice to humankind. The most common associations found in various texts on medieval magic regarding the 'watchers' are as follows:

1. Araqiel: taught the signs of the earth.
2. Armaros: taught the resolving of enchantments.
3. Azazel: taught the making of weapons of war.
4. Barqel: taught astrology.
5. Ezequeel: taught the knowledge of the clouds.
6. Gadreel: taught the art of cosmetics.
7. Kokabiel: taught the mystery of the Stars.
8. Penemue: taught writing.
9. Sariel: taught the knowledge of the Moon.
10. Semjaza: taught Herbal enchantments.
11. Shamshiel: taught the signs of the Sun.According to Christian belief their sins filled the Earth with violence and the world was destroyed as a result of their intervention. (See here).

Now this is eerily similar to another myth:
The Apkallu (Akkadian) or Abgal, (Sumerian) are seven Sumerian demigods said to have been created by the god Enki (Akkadian: Ea) to give civilization to mankind. They served as priests of Enki and as advisors or sages to the earliest "kings" or rulers of Sumeria before the flood. They are credited with giving mankind the Me (moral code), the crafts, and the arts. They were seen as fish-like men who emerged from the sweet water Apsu. They are commonly represented as having the lower torso of a fish, or dressed as a fish. They have also been depicted with wings, having either a human head or an eagle's head.



One begins to wonder whether some scribes, in an attempt to fill in the blanks in antediluvian history, borrowed and embroidered existing myths of the area.

Enterprising writers have tried hard to link what's to be found in parts of the Old Testament, and in myth, to potential scenarios in the far far distant history of humans. Some myth does indeed have a core of fact, well disguised. Some parts of the Old Testament, written before there was any tradition of fiction writing, are probably garbled attempts by scribes, who came along much later, to explain the inexplicable and incomprehensible.

It's not entirely out of the question, is it, that what is described in ancient texts is a visitation from beings from another planet?

Erich von Daniken fired my interest in this topic long ago and far away. I read his first book, Chariot of the Gods soon after it was publishsed in the 1960s. His later books were never as good. I suspect he realised he was on to a money-making subject and tried to extend it for as long as possible. Likewise in the case of Zechariah Sitchen, whose approach is more that of a novelist, using what he considers to be facts as his material.

Life would be less interesting, and much less profitable for some, without such mysteries as these.