by Harvey Kraft
Putting his life at risk, and those of his colleagues, Daniel volunteered to advise the king, being confident that Elohim had revealed to him the meaning of the dream. It referred, he declared, to the fate of the world in times yet to come. The various types of metals composing the body of the “robotic figure“ represented the future empires of Babylon to follow after Nebuchadnezzar’s establishment of a Golden Era. The succeeding second kingdom to his would be inferior, Daniel said. The third, however, would spread Babylon’s rule across the world. The fourth empire will be given a choice of two paths, one ruthless and the other peaceful. As these two ways of governance cannot be integrated, the fourth empire will choose to take the path that will make it the greatest of all powers. But in the end its fateful decision will bring upon it the fire of annihilation.
Daniel revealed that the dream was a divine premonition worthy only of a great king. The four metals composing the figure were symbolic of the king’s reign and the three regimes that followed.
The four metals of the giant’s body would identify the four “Babylonian Empires“ in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as follows: (1) Gold – the Chaldean Golden Age of Nebuchadnezzar II was followed by (2) Silver – the Moon-worshipping kings who caused the deterioration of Babylon. Next, it would be overtaken by (3) Bronze – the Empire of Persia of Cyrus the Great and his son Kambujiya followed by the opportunity to choose a peaceful path. However, after a coup, the (4) Iron Empire would begin with Darius the Great at the helm. It would become the most expansive empire in the world up to its time.
Although the dream predicted a fiery end for the last empire in the vision, Nebuchadnezzar felt relieved and honored that his contributions would lead to a Golden Age, represented by the gold metal head of the figure. To show his appreciation to Daniel for unveiling the dream’s meaning he awarded him with the political position of viceroy-overseer of Babylon. Having saved his fellow Magi from execution, Daniel’s colleagues also chose Daniel to be their Chief Magus. Ironically, Daniel became the “chief lion” in the Magi den. Henceforth, the Chief Magus of Esagila could fulfill both religious and political duties, and the position would be chosen only on the basis of skill and wisdom rather than any particular religious affiliation.
Daniel served his king well by repeatedly interpreting other mysteriously haunting dreams. Through one of those dreams Daniel established the direction the Magi Order would pursue in the future. He predicted the coming of a savior.
In another of Daniel’s interpretations, the emperor’s “Dream of Four Beasts,” he foresaw the coming of a savior who would lead the way to a bright future, this One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth had the mission to initiate the establishment of World Peace:
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away,
and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed
—DANIEL 7:1 (HEBREW BIBLE)
Although the Bible’s Book of Daniel suggested that he lived to the age of one hundred, this number may be indicative of his legacy, not the lifetime of a single individual. At the time, highly respected names were converted into honorific titles. It may be that the Magi Order later bestowed the title of “Dana” on important personages of high esteem who pledged to continue Daniel’s legacy of wise counsel.
THE ROOT
With many religions congregating in Babylon under the influence of the Magi Order, the name of Marduk had taken on a generalized meaning. References to him were replaced with the title of Lord God (Bel), to reflect the view that the Supreme Being had many names, Marduk, Enlil, Amun-Rae, Elohim, Assur, and Brahma, among others.
The Babylonian Magi sought to bridge all beliefs with an all-encompassing understanding of Universal Truth. They invited clerics from across many cultures to join them in a comprehensive effort of research and debate. Espousing mutual respect and tolerance, they embarked on a philosophical approach aimed at investigating and debating the universal meanings of life and the relationships of Heaven and Earth.
The Magi clerical community assembled under their roof master scribes skilled in mythic storytelling. They were tasked with writing a historical genealogy that would link all nations and tribes with a common origin. With great ferocity and brilliance, Babylonian scribes gathered evidence dating back to Sumer and Egypt. They collected stories about ancestral heroes, prophets and prophecies, and migratory histories linking the past to the present. They created a lineage that over many generations forked into all the nations and cultures known to them.69 Looking back at the story of Nippur’s “failed human experiment“ and Uruk’s ark builder, written some 2,000 years earlier, they assumed that the Great Flood marked a new starting point for the human race.
Like their predecessors in Sumer/Akkad and earlier Chaldean explorations of celestial movements, the Magi also turned to the stars. At the Esagila Ziggurat Watchtower (Etemenanki) the Magi stargazers and mapmakers worked in tandem with adepts seeking to unravel the cosmic laws. They chartered the night sky, made mathematical measurements and calculations, and looked into their lapis lazuli tablets in hopes of seeing patterns underlying the laws of universal dynamics.
The wise sages in their midst came from some fifty kingdoms throughout Babylon, Egypt, the Levant, Assyria, Lydia, Greece, Medes, and Greater Aryana. They may have had an influence on the Hebrew Genesis; the Zoroastrian work of sacred hymns, the Gathas; and the Buddhist sutras. From the earliest shamanic fellowships to the organized religions of Sumer/Akkad, Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, and the nomadic challengers of Aryan and Hebrew beliefs, all had espoused some sort of harmonious Universal Order that integrated nature and the divine with societies and individuals. The Magi were looking for a common theme such as this at the core of all religions.
They were searching for an overarching Universal Truth governing all Existence—one underlying infrastructure that would encompass cosmic, divine, natural, and human Laws. Universal Truth extended beyond the visible world, beyond death, beyond time and space. It regulated the cosmos, synchronized all that moved, and bound together the fate of beings. It went by the names Ma’at, Emet, Arta, Rta, Asha, Arche, and Dharma.
In Egypt’s Old Kingdom the Pyramid Texts of Unas (2375 and 2345 BCE) referred to Universal Truth as Ma’at. Egyptians associated harmonious human actions—social interactions, good deeds, ritual acknowledgment of the gods, and the benevolent acts of their rulers—with proper alignment of the heavens and the earth. They regarded the behavior and truthfulness of a person in relation to divine Cosmic Order to be the determinant factor in achieving a quality life for individuals, their families, and communities. The Hebrews, whose language originated in Africa, used a similar sounding word for Universal Truth: Emet,70 which they defined as the stable and consistent wisdom of God.
All agreed that the disturbance or interruption of the harmonious continuity of Universal Truth would result in chaos and threaten nature’s equilibrium. For farming cultures, the bounty of the land depended on the orderly cycle of the seasons and the consistent performance of the elements. For seafarers, alignment with Universal Truth meant calm seas. For nomadic tribes, Universal Truth related to the practical objectives of migration, such as finding food, clothing, and shelter. In all cases, when the Universal Truth disconnected with Nature, the gods would fall from grace and humans would suffer.
The Sumerian word for Universal Truth, Arta (Akk. Riddum) suggested that the gods infused the rule of divine order and harmony into Nature and social law. The Aryans echoed that Sumerian word for Universal (Skt. Rta71), but added the concept of pure wisdom to its meaning. The Arya tribes migrating from the Black Sea region (Europe, Hittite Anatolia, Lydia, and the Steppes) across to Greater Aryana (Medes, Elam, Scythia, Gandhara, and Indus) embraced hundreds of gods, but their common spiritual destination was to merge the soul with Universal Truth and become one with the gods. By the time the Vedic teaching, the Rig Veda, came to be recorded in the Indus Valley (1500 BCE) the word Rta appeared to have become the divine wisdom that created Unive
rsal Law, Cosmic order, and Universal Truth.
The Orphics, who were sages of the Aegean Sea area and represented the westernmost enclave of Eurasian shamanism, transliterated Rta to Arche. They described this principle as the essence of Reality. Accordingly, in its archaic state the “arche-type” of Universal Truth gave form to the world. It encompassed all that could be and would be and contained the first cause from which Existence emerged. Like the Vedic Rishi who had migrated east, the Orphics shared the view that essential chaos, in the form of original sin, was embedded in Universal Truth, and it forced souls to cycle repeatedly through reincarnation.
The Brahmanic cosmology, as elucidated in the Upanisads, transitioned Rta into Dharma. This was defined as the divine Universal-Consciousness underlying all of existence, unifying cosmic and social laws. Through mastery of divine thoughts and ritual practice, the Brahmins of the Indus and Ganges Rivers (today Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India) believed that they could “climb” to the Heavenly City of the Creator-God Brahma located at the top of the Cosmic Mountain. The privilege to break the bounds of mortal suffering was reserved exclusively to those born into their religious caste. Only the souls of Brahmins could merge with Brahma’s Divine Self in the afterlife, simultaneously achieving immortality in Heaven and ending the cycle of reincarnation.
ASCETICS
With the passing of King Cyaxares (625–585 BCE), builder of the Median Empire, his son Astyages (reigned 585–550 BCE) inherited the governance of an empire stretching from Lydia to Scythia. During his reign, an era of relative stability and success, the independent Sun-Lion sage thrived. In Medes the Magi Order had embraced this role of the Arya sage-seer as the seeker of Universal Truth. Having studied cosmologies from near and far, they explored new vistas, offered prophecies, and invited proposals for new ways to cross into Universal-Consciousness.
The most powerful influencers among the Magi Order in the east, the Scythian Magi, were primarily Rishi of the Vedic tradition. Among them a radical new movement known as asceticism was gaining popularity. Its practitioners were independent seers, the Sramana,72 who left their tribes to go into the forests and mediate day and night. They turned away from the rules of society and institutional religions, instead choosing to pursue the full-time practice of trance-meditation. They used denial of the material world as a means for purifying their soul to free it of social and spiritual ills. These seers predicted with great excitement the impending arrival of a sage of all sages, the One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth.
On the coast of the Aegean in the far western reaches of the Median Empire, the ascetic Orphics were in line with the goals of the Magi. They derived their name from the legend of Orpheus, the musician, poet, and prophet, who descended into Hell (Grk. Hades) in search of his wife. The story echoed a Sumerian myth whereby Ishtar descended to the netherworld “House of Dust” in search for her husband, testifying to the cultural link between the Orphic Greeks and Mesopotamia.
When Mesopotamian mythologies reached the Aegean shores they inspired a spurt of adaptations to the epic Greek Mythos73 that began more than a thousand years earlier.
The initial source of Greek beliefs was the island of Crete, home of the Minoan civilization (established 2800 BCE), a prodigy of ancient civilization featuring multilevel buildings, streets, squares, plumbing, sewage, artwork and industry. Its creativity was contemporary with the advanced Harrapan culture in the Indus-Saraswati region, perhaps linked in some way with Crete, developer of the first sea-faring culture, as it made trade possible between Egyptian, European, and Mesopotamian neighbors.
The primordial deities of the Greeks74 were reminders of the Sumerian and Egyptian creators of Earth and Heaven. Their priests through contact with those other religions developed a similar cosmogony beginning with primordial time when Chaos agitated the Arche, giving rise to the ground of Mother Earth (Grk. Gaia) who then gave birth to the sky (Grk. Uranus). The Mother Earth Goddess, Gaia, was contemporary with the Egyptian Hathor and the Sumerian Ninhursag. Her body was the world mountain where the gods took residence.
The Minoan shamans traveled the seas in search of the Cosmic Mountain in order to mark the center of the channel connecting Heaven and Earth, the so-called navel of the biosphere. They landed75 in Delphi, where they established the divination temple of Gaia at the axis mundi of Mount Parnassus. They appointed a female shaman, the Oracle of Delphi, to channel the divine words of the gods, which they transcribed into hymnals of destiny.
The Greek Supreme God, Zeus, was modeled after Marduk, and the battle between the Greek Titans and Gods was influenced by Mesopotamian mythology. Based on the Babylonian story of the gods overthrowing their forerunners, the giant, bestial old deities who hated their own children, the Greeks created a narrative to explain how their human-bodied gods rebelled against the older generation of Titan beasts. The fall of the Titans and takeover by the Greek Gods appeared after the collapse of the Minoan culture. Its cities, ports, and crops were destroyed by a volcanic eruption, Shockwaves, and an ensuing tsunami (1630 BCE), the largest in recorded history.
Emulating Akkadian and Babylonian myths, Zeus and his fellow Greek Gods forever banished the monstrous Titans to the Underworld (Grk. Tartarus), a bottomless abyss beneath the ground of Existence. In a rage, the Titan Chronos unleashed a Great Flood, a relentless nine-day deluge of rain that reached the top of Mount Parnassus (8,000 feet high). Only two mortals survived in an ark to restart civilization. To prevent human beings from repeating the sins that caused the Deluge, thereafter Zeus would use his thunderbolt (an echo of Marduk and the Vedic Indra) against any who blasphemed the gods. Fear of his wrath would keep people in line, thus making civilized behavior possible. Natural catastrophes were deemed to be expressions of his anger. But the immortal Greek Gods were not perfect either. Like humans, they used their powers for selfish reasons and failed to see the future. They suffered from the human flaws of emotions and desires.
To establish stability Zeus needed an advisor, so he turned to the Titan Goddess Themis. She represented Divine Law (Grk. Logos), the inherent wisdom of the Universe. Serving Zeus through her transcendental voice, she espoused the universal value of character (Grk. Ethos) and provided instructions for humankind about justice, morals, piety, virtues, goodwill, and the consequence of violating the Ethos. She espoused the Egyptian view that in death souls would be judged, and sinners would be sent to a hellish abyss below.
The emotional temperaments and vulnerabilities of the deities and their territorial sovereignty over Nature gave rise to the view that the achievement of an ethical life was the singularly greatest accomplishment possible for a human being and a challenge even to the immortals.
By the 6th century BCE, from one end of the Median Empire to the other, Lion-Sun shamans developed an ethical foundation to the understanding of the Arche or Rta. Both the Western Orphics and the Eastern Sramana turned to asceticism as the vehicle for achieving ethical purity. In increasing numbers their practitioners abandoned institutional religion and social responsibilities to pursue their authentic spiritual aspirations in isolation. They rejected temptations, ego-gratification, and material possessions. Adopting an ascetic lifestyle in pursuit of purification, the ascetic freedom movement used mystic initiatives (Grk. teletai) tied to euphoric trance journeys in search of Universal Truth.
The ascetics defined four principles upon which they based their total commitment:
1. Nature is cyclical; existence is cyclical. Therefore, it follows that the soul must travel through a cycle of successive births.
2. The cause for cyclical reincarnation, repeated rebirth into this world of suffering or lower worlds of greater sufferings, is one’s attachment to physical and material seductions. The soul’s attachment to sin carried over from prior lives. This is the basis for original sin, sin that starts from birth. Those who can purify the soul of sin would be rewarded with rebirth in Paradise, a divinely reserved dimension at the far edges of the World to the west (Grk. Elysium) an
d east (Sum. Dilmun).
3. Total liberation from the cycle of rebirth and reincarnation required continuous devotion to God through hymnal chanting and self-denial.
4. The accomplishment of divine purity will cause the soul to become weightless in death. Free from mortal encumbrances it will float up to the higher regions of the Cosmic Mountain where it will abide forever in a state of immortal bliss
To honor the ancient legacy of the Lion-Sun tradition, Lydia (Turkey), a rich trading kingdom on the eastern coast of the Aegean, produced the first-known coin in history featuring the stamped image of a roaring lion head with a sunburst emanating from his forehead. The coin’s image ordered by Lydia’s King Alyattes (610–550 BCE), the model for the legendary Midis, a king with a golden touch, lauded the power of the visionary seer to emit from his mind a spotlight on Universal Truth. As a Black Sea nation, Lydia celebrated the region’s history as the origination point of the Arya traditions, and simultaneously it heralded the prediction in its day that a messianic Lion-Sun figure was coming soon, the One-Who-Comes to Declare the Truth.
King Croesus, successor to Alyattes, shed light on another path represented by a contemporary sage whose wisdom was conveyed without mythic imagery. Thales of Miletus (624–546 BCE), credited later by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as the father of Greek philosophy, was a mathematician and cosmogonist. He represented an alternative approach among sages, the concept of Philosophical Naturalism that used deductive reasoning and observation to offer an explanation of natural phenomena unrelated to the dictates of deities.
