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THIS IS WITHOUT
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Disorder
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"Tom,
That was the most fascinating
interview I have ever heard. So
crystal clear. I would be amazed if
anyone could listen to it without
being blown away... No one has
deciphered the Great Seal until now. I
thank Jesus that I have heard it, and
can call you a friend. May you live
forever." David Flynn,
internationally known researcher and
best selling author of "Temple at
the Center of Time"
Tom
Horn has launched a new blog site for the express
purpose of blogging enigmatic
information concerning the greatest
conspiracy of all time. "Read It Before It Is Banned By
The US Government"
is not a play on words or an elaborate
advertising plot. Tom has visited more
than a dozen states in the last 12
months, met with experts in
disciplines from science to
government, and has committed to
writing, for as long as he can,
information related to what he says is
coming. Tom will be submitting (God
willing) at least one entry per week
during 2009.
According
to the Greeks, the greatest outcome of the love
affair between Zeus and Leto was the birth of the
most beloved of the oracle gods—Apollo. More
than any other god in ancient history, Apollo
represented the passion for prophetic inquiry
among the nations. Though mostly associated with
classical Greece, scholars agree that Apollo
existed before the Olympian pantheon and some even
claim that this entity was first known as Apollo
by the Hyperboreans—an ancient and legendary
people to the north. Herodotus came to this
conclusion and recorded how the Hyperboreans
continued in worship of Apollo even after his
induction into the Greek pantheon, making an
annual pilgrimage to the land of Delos where they
participtated in the famous Greek festivals of
Apollo. Lycia—a small country in southwest
Turkey—also had an early connection with Apollo,
where he was known as Lykeios, which some have
joined to the Greek Lykos or ‘wolf’, thus
making one of his ancient titles, “the wolf
slayer.”
Apollo, with his twin sister Artemis, was said by
the Greeks to have been born in the land of
Delos—the children of Zeus (Jupiter) and of the
Titaness Leto. While an important oracle existed
there and played a role in the festivals of the
god, it was the famous oracle at Delphi that
became the celebrated mouthpiece of the Olympian.
Located on the mainland of Greece, the omphalos of
Delphi (the stone which the Greeks believed marked
the center of the earth) can still be found among
the ruins of Apollo’s Delphic temple. So
important was Apollo’s oracle at Delphi that
wherever Hellenism existed, its citizens and
kings, including some from as far away as Spain,
ordered their lives, colonies, and wars, by its
sacred communications. It was here that the
Olympian gods spoke to mortal men through the use
of a priesthood, which interpreted the
trance-induced utterances of the Pythoness or
Pythia. She was a middle-aged woman who sat on a
copper-and-gold tripod, or, much earlier, on the
“rock of the sibyl” (medium), and crouched
over a fire while inhaling the smoke of burning
laurel leaves, barley, marijuana, and oil, until a
sufficient intoxication for her prophecies had
been produced. While the use of the laurel leaves
may have referred to the nymph Daphne (Greek for
laurel), who escaped from Apollo’s sexual
intentions by transforming herself into a laurel
tree, the leaves also served the practical purpose
of supplying the necessary amounts of hydrocyanic
acid and complex alkaloids which, when combined
with hemp, created powerful hallucinogenic
visions. An alternative version of the Oracle myth
claims that the Pythia sat over a fissure
breathing in magic vapors that rose up from a deep
crevice within the earth. The vapors “became
magic” as they were mingled with the
“smells” of the rotting carcass of the dragon
Python, which had been slain and thrown down into
the crevice by Apollo as a youth. In either case,
it was under the influence of such ‘forces’
that the Pythia prophesied in an unfamiliar voice
thought to be that of Apollo himself. During the
pythian trance the medium’s personality often
changed, becoming melancholic, defiant, or even
animal-like, exhibiting a psychosis that may have
been the source of the werewolf myth, or
lycanthropy, as the Pythia reacted to an encounter
with Apollo/Lykeios—the wolf god. Delphic
“women of python” prophesied in this way for
nearly a thousand years and were considered to be
a vital part of the pagan order and local economy
of every Hellenistic community. This adds to
the mystery of adoption of the Pythians and Sibyls
by certain quarters of Christianity as “vessels
of truth.” These women, whose lives were
dedicated to channeling from frenzied lips the
messages of gods and goddesses, turn up especially
in Catholic art, from altars to illustrated books
and even upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,
where five Sibyls join the Old Testament prophets
in places of sacred honor. The Cumaean Sibyl (also
known as Amalthaea), whose prophecy about the
return of the god Apollo is encoded in the Great
Seal of the United States, was the oldest of the
Sibyls and the seer of the Underworld who in the
Aeneid gave Aeneas a tour of the infernal region.
Whether by trickery or occult power, the
prophecies of the Sibyls were sometimes amazingly
accurate. The Greek historian, Herodotus
(considered the father of history), recorded an
interesting example of this. Croesus, the king of
Lydia, had expressed doubt regarding the accuracy
of Apollo’s Oracle at Delphi. To test the
oracle, Croesus sent messengers to inquire of the
Pythian prophetess as to what he, the king, was
doing on a certain day. The priestess surprised
the king’s messengers by visualizing the
question, and by formulating the answer, before
they arrived. A portion of the historian’s
account says:
...the moment that
the Lydians (the messengers of Croesus) entered
the sanctuary, and before they put their
questions, the Pythoness thus answered them in
hexameter verse: “…Lo! on my sense there
striketh the smell of a shell-covered tortoise,
Boiling now on a fire, with the flesh of a lamb,
in a cauldron. Brass is the vessel below, and
brass the cover above it.” These words the
Lydians wrote down at the mouth of the Pythoness
as she prophesied, and then set off on their
return to Sardis....[when] Croesus undid the
rolls....[he] instantly made an act of
adoration... declaring that the Delphic was the
only really oracular shrine.... For on the
departure of his messengers he had set himself
to think what was most impossible for any one to
conceive of his doing, and then, waiting till
the day agreed on came, he acted as he had
determined. He took a tortoise and a lamb, and
cutting them in pieces with his own hands,
boiled them together in a brazen cauldron,
covered over with a lid which was also of brass
(Herodotus, book 1: 47).
Another interesting
example of spiritual insight by an Apollonian
Sibyl is found in the New Testament Book of Acts.
Here the demonic resource that energized the
Sibyls is revealed.
And it came to
pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel
possessed with a spirit of divination [of
python, a seeress of Delphi] met us, which
brought her masters much gain by soothsaying:
The same followed Paul and us, and cried,
saying, These men are the servants of the most
high God, which shew unto us the way of
salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul,
being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I
command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come
out of her. And he came out the same hour. And
when her masters saw that the hope of their
gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas…
And brought them to the magistrates, saying,
These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble
our city. (Acts 16:16-20)
The story in Acts is
interesting because it illustrates the level of
culture and economy that had been built around the
oracle worship of Apollo. It cost the average
Athenian more than two days’ wages for an
oracular inquiry, and the average cost to a
lawmaker or military official seeking important
State information was charged at ten times that
rate. This is why, in some ways, the action of the
woman in the book of Acts is difficult to
understand. She undoubtedly grasped the damage
Paul’s preaching could do to her industry.
Furthermore, the Pythia of Delphi had a
historically unfriendly relationship with the Jews
and was considered a pawn of demonic power.
Quoting again from my first book Spiritual
Warfare—The Invisible Invasion, we read:
Delphi with its
surrounding area, in which the famous oracle
ordained and approved the worship of Asclepius,
was earlier known by the name Pytho, a chief
city of Phocis. In Greek mythology, Python—the
namesake of the city of Pytho—was the great
serpent who dwelt in the mountains of
Parnassus… In Acts 16:16, the demonic woman
who troubled Paul was possessed with a spirit of
divination. In Greek this means a spirit of
python (a seeress of Delphi, a pythoness)...[and]
reflects...the accepted Jewish belief...that the
worship of Asclepius [Apollo’s son] and other
such idolatries were, as Paul would later
articulate in 1 Corinthians 10:20, the worship
of demons. [3]
It could be said
that the Pythia of Acts 16 simply prophesied the
inevitable. That is, the spirit that possessed her
knew the time of Apollo’s reign was over for the
moment, and that the spread of Christianity would
lead to the demise of the Delphic oracle. This is
possible as demons are sometimes aware of changing
dispensations (compare the pleas of the demons in
Matthew 8:29, “...What have we to do with thee,
Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to
torment us before the time?”). The last recorded
utterance of the oracle at Delphi seems to
indicate the spirit of the Olympians understood
this. From Man, Myth & Magic, we read:
Apollo....delivered
his last oracle in the year 362 AD, to the
physician of the Emperor Julian, the Byzantine
ruler who tried to restore paganism after
Christianity had become the official religion of
the Byzantine Empire. ‘Tell the King,’ said
the oracle, ‘that the curiously built temple
has fallen to the ground, that bright Apollo no
longer has a roof over his head, or prophetic
laurel, or babbling spring. Yes, even the
murmuring water has dried up.’ [4]
As the oracle at
Delphi slowly diminished, the entity Apollo
secured his final and most durable ancient
characterization through the influence of his
favorite son—Asclepius. Beginning at Thessaly
and spreading throughout the whole of Asia Minor,
the cult of Asclepius—the Greek god of healing
and anti-christ archetype—became the chief
competitor of early Christianity. Asclepius was
even believed by many pagan converts of
Christianity to be a living presence who possessed
the power of healing. Major shrines were erected
to Asclepius at Epidaurus and at Pergamum, and for
a long time he enjoyed a strong cult following in
Rome where he was known as Aesculapius. Usually
depicted in Greek and Roman art carrying a snake
wound around a pole, Asclepius was often
accompanied by Telesphoros, the Greek god of
convalescence. He was credited with healing a
variety of incurable diseases, including raising a
man from the dead, a miracle which later caused
Hades to complain to Zeus who responded by killing
Asclepius with a thunderbolt. When Apollo argued
that his son had done nothing worthy of death,
Zeus repented and restored Asclepius to life;
immortalizing him as the god of medicine.
In the next entry we will add to this the psychotic
aspect of the demon Apollo/Osiris in the
expression of Dionysus.