Trivia on Zeus

A Blind Man Kills a Nefarious Despot

In 1505 BC (Paris’ Chronicle; according to Ranke-Graves) an event shook the world of the Gods that centuries later was still showing effects: Baal Zeus, since the unlawful appropriation of Canaan 1’600 years before decried as nefarious, disempowered his father Cronus alias Ham in Greek Thessalia.

“After the three brothers held council of war”, says Ranke-Graves, “Hades (Mithras) crept unseen up to Cronus and stole his weapons. While Poseidon (Put) threatened Cronus with his trident and thus diverted his attention, Zeus cast him down with his lightning bolt … The three Hekatoncheiren (the ones with a hundred arms) threw rocks at the rest of the Titans who then fled.”

The deeply humiliated Cronus was together with other male Titans banned “to a British island in the farthest West” (Ranke-Graves) and there was “under the watch of the Hekatoncheiren”.

On the islands of Britannia Cronus was know as Bran, says Ranke-Graves. At least the deposed King of the descendents of Noah seems to have had enough freedom of movement to commute between Britannia and Jutland’s Hyperborea, the land of the Æsir.

For in Jutland the star of Cronus alias Odin shone for a further three hundred years until Ragnarök, and it is certainly no accident that the North Sea was called by Apollonius of Rhodes and other authors of antiquity the “Cronus Sea”.

But Zeus, who believed himself to be at the height of his career, actually had only reached the apex of his nefariousness.

During his life lasting around 1’700 years he had been involved in the emasculation of Noah-Uranos, as Canaan he had unlawfully occupied Lebanon, he had raped and impregnated dozens of women, he was hated due to his arrogant, mercurial and fickle character, and even his well-known son Apollo now opposed him.

Ranke-Graves: “There came a time when the pride and the crankiness of Zeus became so unbearable that Hera, Poseidon, Apollo and all the other Olympians, with the exception of Hestias, suddenly surrounded him as he lay sleeping on his bed. They bound him with leather thongs and a hundred knots so that he could not move. He threatened them with immediate death, but they had put the thunderbolt without his reach and sneered at him sarcastically.”

The half-hearted family revolt however failed for “hundred-armed” Briareus loosened the knots, and the shamed Olympians had to swear never again to rise up against Zeus.

The deficient personality of Zeus was thriving in a family climate that was affected by “jealous spats” (Ranke-Graves), and probably not without reason did the Angel of His Face asked Moses in the years of the Exodus, at mount Horeb, to write this down:

“And in the third week of the year of this jubilee did unclean demons begin to seduce the children of the sons of Noah and to bewitch them and to corrupt them … And the sons of Noah began to fight, in order to imprison and to kill one another and to spill human blood onto the Earth …”

And mother Rhea, the wife of Cronus, early on feared for the worst.Ranke-Graves: She “foresaw what grief his (Zeus’) salaciousness would create and forbade him to marry. When fully vexed he threatened to rape her, she transformed herself into a snake. This however did not deter Zeus. He transformed himself into a male snake and wound himself around her in a permanent knot. In this way he realised his threat.”

With this Zeus showed that he not even shrank from laying his hands on his own mother.

In a short characterisation of the near-eastern Hadd whom we had identified as Baal-Zeus, Helmer Ringgren says: “Often it is the destructive trait that is dominant.”

Megalomania, ruthlessness, lack of self-control and drunkenness – these personality traits of Zeus we find in an old Indian satirical poem in the Rigveda (10,119) pointed at Indra.

Baldr (Baal-Zeus), Sohn des Odin,
wurde um 1 225 v. Chr. von seinem Bruder Hödr getötet

Heinrich Gompertz had translated these telling verses:

This, even this, was my resolve,
To win a cow, to win a steed:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

Like violent gusts of wind the draughts
That I have drunk have lifted me:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

The draughts I drank that borne me up,
As fleet-foot horses draw a car:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

The hymn hath reached me like a cow
Who lows to meet her darling calf:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

As a wright bends a chariot-seat
So round my heart I bend the hymn:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

Not as a mote within the eye
Count the five tribes of men with me:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

The heavens and earth themselves
Have not grown equal to one half of me:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

I in my grandeur have surpassed
The heavens and all this spacious earth:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

Aha, this spacious earth
Will I deposit either here or there:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

In one short moment will I smite
The earth in fury here or there:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

One of my flanks is in the sky,
I let the other trail below:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

I, greatest of the mighty ones,
Am lifted to the firmament:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

I seek the worshipper’s abode,
Oblation-bearers to the gods:
Have I not drunk of Soma juice?

Zeus, the “heavenly”, surely was one the most nefarious figures among the descendents of Noah. As weak as the efforts of his Olympian relations in restraining his self-indulgent character were, as effectual was his blind brother Hödr in Hyperborea to the North. Hödr succeeded in doing what many a Titan may have wished for but failed to achieve.

It was Hödr who killed Zeus. According to Hellenic sources the time of death may be dated to the years preceding Ragnarök – the time around the year 1225 BC.

The news of the death of Zeus, however, can only be found in the Nordic traditions, in which Zeus carries the name Baldr, and these reports already carry clear traits of symbolic obfuscation of the true events.

According to the “Germanic Sagas of Gods and Heroes” the villainous Loki inveigled the blind Hödr to shoot Baldr with the “twig of a mistletoe”. Felix Dahn handed down the poem of Baldr’s death. We did not find an English translation. See here the German version:

Warum willst du nicht schießen auf Balder, den guten Gott,
Den andern gleich, mein Hader? Gefällt dir nicht das Spiel?
Oder fürchtest du, du könntest verfehlen gar das Ziel?”

Da sprach der arge Hader zu Loke reich an List:

“Du weißt, dass ich nicht seh’n mag, wie Balder glücklich ist;
Zum andern bin ich ohne Waffen und Geschoss.”

Da sprach der listige Loke, Wodans Redegenoss:

“So tu nun doch desgleichen wie jeder andere Mann,
Dem guten Balder zu Ehren, weil dir’s nicht helfen kann.
Ich werde dich hinführen, dahin, wo Baldr steht.
Schieß nur mit diesem Zweige nach ihm, wie’s auch ergeht.”

So nahm Hader die Mistel, nicht gut dem Gotte gesinnt,
Und schoss nach Lokes Weisung.
Da flog der Zweig geschwind
Auf Balder, und der Gute fiel zu der Erde tot.
Das war bei Göttern und Menschen die allergrößte Not.

This was the end of nefarious Zeus. And more than half a millennium had to pass until the shuddering remembrance of a debauched despot had so far abated that Zeus in the end again was honoured in the Hellenic pantheon as mythical world leader, as sovereign of all Gods, an honour he never earned.

This post is also available in: German