For a long time I struggled with the widespread accounts of the creation of humankind, unable to break the code of what their suggestions of us being fashioned from dust, clay or earth represented, other than the orthodox view that the ancients regarded us as the progeny of the ‘Earth Mother’. Some of the traditions are somewhat more complex, however, and just may provide a more meaningful insight to complete our spiritual interpretation.

In His Own Image

Some of the most detailed accounts of the creation of humankind are to be found in the Mesopotamian texts. Indeed, it is these that Zecharia Sitchin and others have used to promote the idea that humankind was genetically created by visitors from another planet, and if we had no better appreciation of the symbolic and spiritual aspects of these texts we could be forgiven, in this instance, for accepting his interpretations – because the details, at first sight and taken out of context, could support just such a proposition.

The most explicit is the Sumerian Birth of Man text, the version we have dating to some time in the second millennium BC. As we have seen so often, this appears to be a composite of two separate original texts that have been merged none too seamlessly. And just as we saw previously in the Akkadian Atrahasis, in the first part we find the gods deciding to create humankind to relieve them of their excessive workload in digging and maintaining their extensive network of irrigation and drainage canals – a theme that, incidentally, I believe has no hidden meaning, and is a purely fanciful notion based on the idea that the gods created the world that the Sumerians inhabited, and their localised experience was of the massive effort involved in the annual ‘corvée’:

To his mother Namma he [Enki] called out:

‘. . . When you have drenched even the core of the Apsu’s fathering clay . . .

O mother mine, when you have determined its mode of being, may Ninmah put together the birth-chair

And when, without any male, you have built it up in it, may you give birth to humankind!’

Without the sperm of a male she gave birth to offspring, to the embryo of humankind.[i]

This emphasis on the mother goddess’ creation of humankind without male assistance can only be taken to mean that it extols the role of the archetypal Earth Mother in producing humankind from her own self – that is, the earth or clay – so from this perspective the text can only support the orthodox view.

The second part of the text is the one more often quoted, because it describes how Enki and Ninmah get drunk together, apparently to celebrate the creation of humankind. Ninmah boasts that she controls the ‘build of men’, be it good or bad, and Enki responds with the challenge that he can mitigate any ‘badness’ that she produces. So Ninmah makes a variety of beings, described as the ‘man-unable-to-close-the-shaking-hand-upon-an-arrow-shaft-to-send-it-going’, the ‘one-handing-back-the-lamp-to-the-men-who-can-see’, the ‘hobbled-by-twisting-ankles’, the ‘moron, the-engenderer-of-which-was-a-Subarean’, the ‘man-leaking-urine’, the ‘woman-who-is-not-giving-birth’, and the ‘man-in-the-body-of-which-no-male-and-no-female-organ-was-placed’. Enki then is able to find a position in society for all these creations, and, after creating his own being that is literally an abortion because it is not gestated properly in the female womb, the text ends with Enki and Ninmah agreeing that both men and women have vital roles to play in the reproductive process.

Accordingly, we can see that it is hopelessly inappropriate to suggest that the second part of this text describes genetic experimentation, when in fact it is clearly a polemic on reproduction and on the role of the disabled in society. It is also very much out of step with the first part, which contains the creation theme proper, while it is also evident that it is set in a time when humankind – for example, in the form of the detested Subareans – already exists.

In the hope of more interesting revelations, let us now turn to the Akkadian texts that deal with the creation of humankind. The most important is the Atrahasis:

Enki made his voice heard

And spoke to the great gods,

‘On the first, seventh, and fifteenth of the month

I shall make a purification by washing.

Then one god should be slaughtered.

And the gods can be purified by immersion.

Nintu shall mix clay

With his flesh and his blood.

Then a god and a man

Will be mixed together in clay.

Let us hear the drumbeat forever after,

Let a ghost come into existence from the god’s flesh,

Let her proclaim it as his living sign,

And let the ghost exist so as not to forget (the slain god).’

They answered ‘Yes!’ in the assembly,

The great Anunnaki who assign the fates.

On the first, seventh, and fifteenth of the month

He made a purification by washing.

Geshtu-e, a god who had intelligence,

They slaughtered in their assembly.[ii]

Now we appear to be getting somewhere, because we have a clear message that humankind was not just created by the gods, but from mixture with at least one of them. And what is the part of the god that humans receive? His ‘ghost’, and his ‘intelligence’. Would it be so very inappropriate to hazard the guess that this is a veiled description of humankind receiving a relatively advanced soul for the first time? The text continues as follows:

Mami made her voice heard

And spoke to the great gods,

‘I have carried out perfectly

The work that you ordered of me.

You have slaughtered a god together with his intelligence.

I have relieved you of your hard work,

I have imposed your load on man.

You have bestowed noise on humankind.

I have undone the fetter and granted freedom.’

This is, of course, the same ‘noise of humankind’ that, when it became excessive, caused the gods to destroy their creation, and which we struggled to interpret in a previous chapter. If it was ‘bestowed’ on humans from the beginning, are we simply referring to the proper development of the power of speech? Or is there something more significant here? We will have to wait until later in the chapter for more clues.

In any case, the goddess then goes on to ‘pinch off fourteen pieces of clay’ and, with the assistance of the ‘womb-goddesses’, proceeds to create the first seven men and seven women. There follows a recommendation of the rituals that should be performed ‘wherever a woman gives birth’, and I might note in passing that these are remarkably similar to those followed by the Hopi of North America.[iii]

The composite Epic of Gilgamesh contains a brief reference to the creation of humans, again involving ‘purification’ and ‘clay’, but we find that the being created is Gilgamesh’s eventual companion, Enkidu, who is described as follows:

She created a (primitive man), Enkidu the warrior: offspring of silence . . .

His whole body was shaggy with hair . . .

He knew neither people not country; he was dressed as cattle are.

With gazelles he eats vegetation,

With cattle he quenches his thirst at the watering place.[iv]

The reference to Enkidu being the ‘offspring of silence’ is surely in deliberate opposition to the ‘noise of humankind’, but again we will leave this to one side for now. In any case, if we ignore the confusion that in this epic he is himself the being that is created, is this passage not a perfect description of humankind’s earlier ancestors before the ‘creation’ of modern humans – by the first incarnations within the general population of relatively advanced human souls – and its ‘civilisation’ by the incarnation among it of certain even more advanced angelic souls?

Meanwhile, in the celebrated Epic of Creation – also known as the Enuma Elish – which dates to the first half of the first millennium BC, a brief reference to the creation of humankind asserts that the ‘blood’ of one of the gods was involved:

They bound him [the chosen god, Qingu] and held him in front of Ea, imposed the penalty on him and cut off his blood. He created humankind from his blood.[v]

This can surely be taken as a metaphor for the life spirit of the ‘god’ entering humankind, as in a more ‘godlike’ soul. Moreover, that is undoubtedly how Berossus interpreted this text, because in reporting it he suggests that it is ‘on this account that men are rational and partake of divine knowledge’.[vi]

Of course, all this becomes distilled in the first chapter of Genesis into the suggestion that humankind was created in ‘the image of God’, but we can now see exactly what this brief and veiled reference implies.[vii] We should also note the confusion in the biblical account that derives from combining the originally separate Elohist and Yahwist texts. The first Elohist-derived chapter simply says ‘male and female created he them’ – that is, men and women were created together – while the second Yahwist-derived chapter contradicts this by stating that Adam was created first ‘of the dust of the ground’, followed by Eve who was fashioned from one of his ribs to act as his ‘help-meet’ or companion.[viii]

As we might expect, Joseph Campbell comments on these texts, and on the biblical variants that derived from them, at some length.[ix] As well as ascribing to the standard view regarding the simple symbolism of creation from the ‘earth’, he discusses the gradual increase in emphasis on the role of the male god or gods in the creation of humans over that of the original mother goddess, resulting from the increasingly patriarchal nature of Mesopotamian society.[x] He also notes the marked philosophical change that results from the introduction of the idea that humankind was created as a servant of the gods.[xi] I have no problem with these arguments. Once again, however, I believe that he is failing to pay proper attention to the deeper symbolism of the spiritual message that lies beneath the surface of these creation accounts.

The Maker, Modeller, Bearer, Begetter

The Mayan Popol Vuh, compiled by native scholars in the middle of the sixteenth century, contains a lengthy description of how a variety of beings were created before a successful human was developed, which is highly comparable to and yet in some ways very different from the world age traditions discussed in a previous chapter.[xii] The following description is taken from the translation made by Mayan scholar Dennis Tedlock.[xiii]

First, the creator deities referred to collectively as the ‘Maker, Modeller, Bearer, Begetter’ fashioned various animals, but they were unable to speak properly to praise them.

And then the deer and birds were told by the Maker, Modeller, Bearer, Begetter:

‘Talk, speak out. Don’t moan, don’t cry out. Please talk, each to each, within each kind, within each group’, they were told – the deer, birds, puma, jaguar, serpent.

‘Name now our names, praise us. We are your mother, we are your father . . . speak, pray to us, keep our days’, they were told. But it didn’t turn out that they spoke like people: they just squawked, they just chattered, they just howled. It wasn’t apparent what language they spoke; each one gave a different cry.

So the deities experimented again, this time:

. . . working with earth and mud. They made a body, but it didn’t look good to them. It was just separating, just crumbling, just loosening, just softening, just disintegrating, and just dissolving. Its head wouldn’t turn, either. Its face was just lopsided, its face was just twisted. It couldn’t look around. It talked at first, but senselessly. It was quickly dissolving in the water. . .

And so the first human creation was destroyed:

So then they dismantled, again they brought down their work and design. Again they talked:

‘What is there for us to make that would turn out well, that would succeed in keeping our days and praying to us?’ they said. Then they planned again. . . .

After various further consultations, a new human was devised from wood:

The moment they spoke it was done: the manikins, woodcarvings, human in looks and human in speech.

This was the peopling of the face of the earth:

They came into being, they multiplied, they had daughters, they had sons, these manikins, woodcarvings. But there was nothing in their hearts and nothing in their minds, no memory of their mason and builder. They just went and walked wherever they wanted. Now they did not remember the Heart of Sky.

And so they fell, just an experiment and just a cutout for humankind. They were talking at first but their faces were dry. They were not yet developed in the legs and arms. They had no blood, no lymph. They had no sweat, no fat. Their complexions were dry, their faces were crusty. They flailed their legs and arms, their bodies were deformed.

And so they accomplished nothing before the Maker, Modeller who gave them birth, gave them heart. They became the first numerous people here on the face of the earth . . .

They were not competent, nor did they speak before the builder and sculptor who made them and brought them forth, and so they were killed, done in by a flood.

So once again this race was destroyed, this time by the ubiquitous flood, and a detailed and gory description of their fate, and the revenge taken on them by the deities they had not praised and the animals they had not respected, ensues. This is followed by a highly suggestive passage:

Such was the scattering of the human work, the human design. The people were ground down, overthrown. The mouths and faces of all of them were destroyed and crushed. And it used to be said that the monkeys in the forests today are a sign of this. They were left as a sign because wood alone was used for their flesh by the builder and sculptor. So this is why monkeys look like people: they are a sign of a previous human work, human design – mere manikins, mere woodcarvings.

Manikins and woodcarvings that resemble monkeys . . . what can the authors have meant? We have already seen the emphasis that the ancient texts and traditions place on the tendency of humans in the golden age to pay due homage to their gods, or, in more philosophical terms, to appreciate and respect their spiritual roots. But here we see it placed in the context of the creation itself, and we find that the emphasis is on the early creations not being able to speak in order to ‘keep our days and pray to us’. In purely practical terms the prerequisite for the golden race was that humans should have the intelligence to appreciate their roots, with the necessary corollary of speech in order to be able to communicate with their peers. And now for the moment of truth . . . because I would argue that these more complex creation traditions just may be describing the idea that relatively advanced souls may have tried to incarnate in human form before our race was sufficiently advanced along the evolutionary path to make the ‘experiment’ viable. This interpretation is, of course, a corollary to my earlier interpretation of the Enochian traditions of the ‘angels’ expressing some uncertainty as to the timing of their fall into incarnation, and also of there being several groups of angels that ‘fell’ at different times and with different results.

Does this suggestion stand up in the continuation of the text? As a final resort, the creators decided to fashion humankind proper from corn:

‘The dawn has approached, preparations have been made, and morning has come for the provider, nurturer, born in the light, begotten in the light. Morning has come for humankind, for the people of the face of the earth’, they said. . . .

And then the yellow corn and white corn were ground, and Xmucane did the grinding nine times. Food was used, along with the water she rinsed her hands with, for the creation of grease; it became human fat when it was worked by the Bearer, Begetter, Sovereign Plumed Serpent, as they are called.

After that, they put it into words: the making, the modelling of our first mother-father, with yellow corn, white corn alone for the flesh, food alone for the human legs and arms, for our first fathers, the four human works.

And, this time, the experiment was more of a success:

And these are the names of our first mother-fathers. They were simply made and modelled, it is said; they had no mother and no father. We have named the men by themselves. No woman gave birth to them, nor were they begotten by the builder, sculptor, Bearer, Begetter. By sacrifice alone, by genius alone they were made, they were modelled by the Maker, Modeller, Bearer, Begetter, Sovereign Plumed Serpent. And when they came to fruition, they came out human:

They talked and they made words.

They looked and they listened.

They walked, they worked.

They were good people, handsome, with looks of the male kind. Thoughts came into existence and they gazed; their vision came all at once. Perfectly they saw, perfectly they knew everything under the sky, whenever they looked. The moment they turned around and looked around in the sky, on the earth, everything was seen without any obstruction. They didn’t have to walk around before they could see what was under the sky; they just stayed where they were.

As they looked, their knowledge became intense. Their sight passed through trees, through rocks, through lakes, through seas, through mountains, through plains. Jaguar Quitze, Jaguar Night, Not Right Now, and Dark Jaguar were truly gifted people.

This is quite clearly yet another eloquent description of the spiritual awareness that humankind displayed in the golden age, when the first advanced souls were successful in incarnating in human form – and I would argue that it strengthens my contention that the descriptions of failed creation attempts are, underneath all the symbolism and distortion, indicative of similar but unsuccessful previous endeavours.

However, the text then takes a peculiar turn. The deities suddenly decided that the people they had created were too good and a potential threat:

‘What our works and designs have said is no good: “We have understood everything, great and small,” they say.’ And so the Bearer, Begetter took back their knowledge:

‘What should we do with them now? Their vision should at least reach nearby, they should see at least a small part of the face of the earth, but what they’re saying isn’t good. Aren’t they merely “works” and “designs” in their very names? Yet they’ll become as great as gods, unless they procreate, proliferate at the sowing, the dawning, unless they increase.’

‘Let it be this way: now we’ll take them apart just a little, that’s what we need. What we’ve found out isn’t good. Their deeds would become equal to ours, just because their knowledge reaches so far. They see everything . . .’ And when they changed the nature of their works, their designs, it was enough that the eyes be marred by the Heart of Sky. They were blinded as the face of a mirror is breathed upon. Their vision flickered. Now it was only from close up that they could see what was there with any clarity.

And such was the loss of the means of understanding, along with the means of knowing everything, by the four humans.

What are we to make of this? In my view one option is to dismiss it as the product of a distorting Christian influence, because it is clearly reminiscent of the account of the ‘first fall’ in Genesis. In the latter, at the serpent’s suggestion Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit of the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’, after which God exclaims ‘Behold, the man is become as one of us’ and banishes them from Eden.[xiv] Moreover, we find a striking similarity between this Mayan tradition and that of the Gnostics – as expressed, for example, in the Apocryphon of John:

And in that moment the rest of the powers became jealous, because he [Adam] had come into being through all of them and they had given their power to the man, and his intelligence was greater than that of those who had made him, and greater than that of the chief archon. And when they recognised that he was luminous, and that he could think better than they, and that he was free from wickedness, they took him and threw him into the lowest region of all matter.[xv]

It is my strong belief that the predominantly Judaeo-Christian theme of the ‘first fall’ is a late and entirely disingenuous one, developed to support what Campbell refers to as the ‘mythic dissociation’ of God and humans – whereby, instead of considering ourselves as all being a ‘part of God’, we are persuaded that the supreme deity is something entirely external to us.[xvi] Unfortunately, it would appear that this is essentially a political doctrine designed to keep the common people in their place, and it forms the fundamental distinction between the systems of the Occident and the Orient.

In any case, as I have previously suggested, to the extent that any ‘falling’ occurred at the outset it was undertaken by advanced souls who deliberately incarnated in physical human form. And, of course, this automatically involves a degree of ‘restriction of spirit’ when compared to life in the ethereal realms.[xvii] So this is perhaps another way of attempting to interpret the Mayan account of a reduction in humankind’s awareness. Meanwhile, the final option is that it represents a distorted memory of the genuine fall into materialism and spiritual debasement of our forgotten race, which is blamed on divine intervention rather than being seen in its true light of an entirely human failure.

The Dawn of Creation

We have seen that the Mayan traditions as portrayed in the Popol Vuh appear to confuse the themes of multiple creations with those of world ages, or alternatively to completely omit the latter. By contrast, we find that the Hopi tradition of world ages discussed in a previous chapter is preceded by a complementary account of the creation of humankind that again has, to some extent, multiple phases:

So Spider Woman gathered earth, this time of four colours, yellow, red, white, and black; mixed with tuchvala, the liquid of her mouth; moulded them; and covered them with her white-substance cape which was the creative wisdom itself. As before, she sang over them the Creation Song, and when she uncovered them these forms were human beings in the image of Sotuknang. Then she created four other beings after her own form. They were wuti, female partners, for the first four male beings.

When Spider Woman uncovered them the forms came to life. This was at the time of the dark purple light, Qoyangnuptu, the first phase of the dawn of Creation, which first reveals the mystery of man’s creation.

They soon awakened and began to move, but there was still a dampness on their foreheads and a soft spot on their heads. This was at the time of the yellow light, Sikangnuqa, the second phase of the dawn of Creation, when the breath of life entered man.

In a short time the sun appeared above the horizon, drying the dampness on their foreheads and hardening the soft spot on their heads. This was the time of the red light, Talawva, the third phase of the dawn of Creation, when man, fully formed and firmed, proudly faced his Creator.

‘That is the Sun’, said Spider Woman. ‘You are meeting your Father the Creator for the first time. You must always remember and observe these three phases of your Creation. The time of the three lights, the dark purple, the yellow, and the red reveal in turn the mystery, the breath of life, and warmth of love. There comprise the Creator’s plan of life for you as sung over you in the Song of Creation. . .’

The First People of the First World did not answer her: they could not speak.[xviii]

This tradition undoubtedly has similarities to that of the Mayans, and appears to reinforce my suggestion that they are describing the difficulties encountered when advanced souls first attempted to incarnate in human or even protohuman forms that ‘could not speak’. It continues:

Spider Woman explained. ‘As you commanded me, I have created these First People. They are fully and firmly formed: they are properly coloured; they have life: they have movement. But they cannot talk. That is the proper thing they lack. So I want you to give them speech. Also the wisdom and the power to reproduce, so that they may enjoy their life and give thanks to the Creator.’

So Sotuknang gave them speech, a different language to each colour, with respect for each other’s difference. He gave them the wisdom and the power to reproduce and multiply.

Then he said to them, ‘With all these I have given you this world to live on and to be happy. There is only one thing I ask of you. To respect the Creator at all times. Wisdom, harmony, and respect for the love of the Creator who made you. May it grow and never be forgotten among you as long as you live.’

So the First People went their directions, were happy, and began to multiply. . . .

Is this, yet again, confirmation that, once they had been ‘given’ the ‘power of speech’ that would allow them to ‘respect the creator’, humankind had at last advanced sufficiently along the evolutionary path to be ready to successfully receive the advanced souls that had been waiting in the wings? Finally, the creation tradition ends as follows:

With the pristine wisdom that had been granted them, they understood that the earth was a living entity like themselves. . . . Thus they knew their mother in two aspects which were often synonymous – as Mother Earth and the Corn Mother.

In their wisdom they also knew their father in two aspects. He was the Sun, the solar god of their universe. Yet his was but the face through which looked Taiowa, their Creator.

These universal entities were their real parents, their human parents being but the instruments through which their power was made manifest. In modern times their descendents remembered this. . . .

The First People, then, understood the mystery of their parenthood. In their pristine wisdom they also understood their own structure and functions – the nature of man himself.

What more eloquent expression of humankind’s dual lineage – that of our bodies from our earthly parents and of our souls from the universal and ethereal – could we desire? And is this not consistent with my suggestion that certain angelic souls must have incarnated at the outset of the golden age to educate their fellows about the true nature of the physical and not-so-physical universe, and of the immortality of the soul?

Silent in Borneo

Further examples of multiple creation attempts from the other side of the world are provided in the traditions of various Indonesian tribes, described by Roland Burrage Dixon in his Polynesian volume of The Mythology of All Races:

A somewhat different form of origin-myth describes a series of attempts at creation in which different materials are tried, the first trials being failures, although success is finally achieved. Thus the Dyaks of the Baram and Rejang district in Borneo say that after the two birds, Iri and Ringgon, had formed the earth, plants, and animals they decided to create man. ‘At first, they made him of clay, but when he was dried he could neither speak nor move, which provoked them, and they ran at him angrily; so frightened was he that he fell backward and broke all to pieces. The next man they made was of hard wood, but he, also, was utterly stupid, and absolutely good for nothing. Then the two birds searched carefully for a good material, and eventually selected the wood of the tree known as Kumpong, which has a strong fibre and exudes a quantity of deep red sap, whenever it is cut. Out of this tree they fashioned a man and a woman, and were so well pleased with this achievement that they rested for a long while, and admired their handiwork. Then they decided to continue creating more men; they returned to the Kumpong tree, but they had entirely forgotten their original pattern, and how they executed it, and they were therefore able only to make very inferior creatures, which became the ancestors of the Maias (the Orang Utan) and monkeys.

A similar tale is found among the Iban and Sakarram Dyaks, only reversing the order, so that after twice failing to make man from wood, the birds succeeded at the third trial when they used clay. Farther north, among the Dusun of British North Borneo, the first two beings ‘made a stone in the shape of a man but the stone could not talk, so they made a wooden figure and when it was made it talked, though not long after it became worn out and rotten; afterwards they made a man of earth, and the people are descended from this till the present day.’[xix]

We can see even from such summaries that they contain similar themes, especially the pervasive one of the inability of the earliest ‘creations’ to talk. And with that we will leave our discussion of the creation traditions.

Horrible Hybrids

One final theme from the ancient texts requires some brief comment before we move on to other things, because it too has caused some confusion and led to what are, in my view, mistaken and misleading interpretations. It is the theme of composite beings that are part-human and part-animal.

In a previous chapter I discussed Berossus’ account of how Oannes brought civilisation to humankind, and argued that suggestions the sage was part-man, part-fish were purely symbolic. However, the following is Berossus’ account of what Oannes himself supposedly wrote concerning the beings that inhabited the ‘primeval waters’:

There was a time in which there was nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced of a two-fold principle. Men appeared with two wings, some with four and with two faces. They had one body but two heads; the one of a man, the other of a woman. They were likewise in their several organs both male and female. Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats. Some had horses’ feet; others had the limbs of a horse behind, but before were fashioned like men, resembling hippocentaurs. Bulls likewise bred there with the heads of men; and dogs with fourfold bodies, and the tails of fishes. Also horses with the heads of dogs: men too and other animals, with the heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures with the limbs of every species of animals. Add to these fishes, reptiles, serpents, with other wonderful animals, which assumed each other’s shape and countenance. Of all these were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at Babylon.[xx]

This account precedes Berossus’ equivalent description of the Mesopotamian Epic of Creation, which itself commences with a description of the ‘undifferentiated waters’ personified by the goddess Tiamat before she was split into two to create heaven and earth – this origin theme being one to which we will return in Part 3. As a result we can only assume that either Polyhistor, or Berossus himself, or someone before them, had become completely confused about chronology, because the idea that these creatures could have any physical form before the earth was even created is clearly ludicrous.

Descriptions of composite beings can also be found in the relatively late works of Pliny, Strabo and Diodorus, among others. One possible source for all these is a Mesopotamian text that Assyriologist Alexander Heidel refers to as A Prince’s Vision of the Underworld, discovered in Ashur and dating to the seventh century BC. It describes the dream of a certain Prince Kumaya:

Namtar, the vizier of the underworld, the creator of decrees, I saw; a man stood before him; the hair of his head he held in his left, while in his right he held a sword.

Namtartu, his consort, had the head of a kuribu, her hands and feet were those of a human being. The death-god had the head of a serpent-dragon, his hands were those of men, his feet were those of (?).

The evil Shedu had the head and the hands of men, he wore a tiara and had the feet of a (?)-bird; his left foot was planted on a crocodile (?). Alluhapnu had the head of a lion, his four hands and his feet were those of men.

Mukil-resh-limutti had the head of a bird, his wings were spread, and he flew to and fro; his hands and feet were those of men. Humuttabal, the boatman of the underworld, had the head of Zu, his four hands and his feet were those of men.

(?) had the head of an ox, his four hands and his feet were those of men. The evil Utukku had the head of a lion, his hands and feet were those of Zu. Shulak was a normal lion, but he stood on his two hind legs.

Mammetu had the head of a goat, her hands and feet were those of men. Nedu, the gatekeeper of the underworld, had the head of a lion, his hands were those of men, his feet those of a bird. Mimma-limnu had two heads; one was the head of a lion, the other the head of (?).

(?) had three feet; the two fore feet were those of a bird, the hind foot that of an ox; he was decked with terrifying splendour. Of two gods – I do not know their names – the one had the head, hands and feet of Zu, in his left hand (?).

The second had a human head, he wore a tiara, in his right hand he carried a club, in his left (?). In all there were fifteen gods; when I saw them, I worshipped them.

Moreover, there was a unique man; his body was black as pitch, his face was like that of Zu, he was clad with a red garment, in his left he carried a bow, in his right he held a sword, and his left foot was planted on a serpent (?).[xxi]

Some commentators have suggested that these various accounts can be taken literally: that they are either descriptions of visitors from other planets, or represent accounts of hybrids that at one time were part of the evolutionary mix on earth.[xxii] We will consider these issues in more detail in Part 2, but for now I should say that in my view neither suggestion matches our knowledge of evolution, and nor are they supported by the archaeological record. And, of course, there is a far more subtle but also simple explanation.

The fact that in the above text these creatures exist in the underworld, and some of them are described as gods of it, hints at what I believe to be the proper perspective for these accounts. We all know that the gods of ancient Egypt, and to a lesser extent Mesopotamia, are often depicted with the head of an animal and a human body, or occasionally vice versa as in the Great Sphinx. Moreover, some of the creatures described by shamans during trance states have similar traits, and shamans themselves often dress in animal costume, giving a composite effect. It seems highly likely to me that these composite forms are archetypes chosen, or even imprinted on the universal consciousness at a higher level, because they represent particular characteristics. And the composite beings described in relatively late Mesopotamian and other literature show sufficient similarities that there is little doubt in my mind that this is their derivation, even if the authors of these accounts seem to show little appreciation of the essentially symbolic nature of the originals.[xxiii]

Conclusion

I have taken a relatively orthodox stance on the issue of composite beings, but the same cannot be said for my interpretation of the creation texts. I have suggested that the Mesopotamian accounts that emphasise the role that the ‘blood’, ‘intelligence’ and ‘ghost’ of a god played in creating humankind support my theme of the first advanced souls incarnating in human form.

I have further suggested that the multiple-creation traditions of Native American and Polynesian tribes may represent the failed attempts of advanced souls to incarnate in human or protohuman forms that were insufficiently physiologically advanced. Of course, one could argue that these traditions are merely describing what ‘humankind’ was like before we fully evolved. But it is clear that they are all attempting to describe deliberate ‘acts of creation’ rather than just some passive process of evolution, as well as a genuine influx of a new ‘godlike’ element of soul across the entire human population. Moreover, we also have the possible Enochian theme of disagreements amongst the ‘angels’ about the right time to incarnate, and of there being several groups of angels that ‘fell’ at different times. All this suggests to me that my interpretation at least deserves serious consideration.

To close this first section, I have already suggested that two types of advanced souls incarnated when humankind was sufficiently evolved to kick-start the golden age, in that a relatively small number of angelic-type souls incarnated to educate a larger number of human-type souls that were also incarnating for the first time. To clarify exactly why both types are necessary in my hypothesis, in my view it was essential to the karmic development of humankind to bring a conscious appreciation of a spiritual worldview into the physical realm. Now in the ordinary course of events, and certainly before anyone knew anything about such a worldview on earth, this could not be ‘summoned out of thin air’ because no one would have known how to meditate to make contact with the higher realms, for example, or even had any recollection at all of their roots in the spiritual realms. So the few angelic souls that were sufficiently advanced as to be able to recall their spiritual roots even while in physical incarnation were vital to kick-start the process. Thereafter, the ordinary human-souled people of the golden race would have got used to passing on this information verbally, and also to the practical methods of making contact with the higher realms for themselves. And if we need further confirmation of this hypothesis, we will find that it is almost unequivocally provided when we examine the Hermetica in Part 3.

In conclusion, as radical as my interpretation of the creation traditions might seem, arguably it provides the final piece of the jigsaw of our spiritual framework for making sense of the huge variety of texts and traditions that we have considered in this and the preceding chapters. And they only serve to reinforce my general theme of a forgotten race of great awareness that lost its spiritual roots and became obsessed with the material and physical to such an extent that universal karma dictated it must perish.

Moreover, my view that this is arguably a more appropriate interpretation than any that has gone before is as unshakable as my view that, if I am right, it has massive significance for the plight of the modern world.