Jesus Triumphant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 8) (5 page)

Fifty miles north of Scythopolis, the city of Caesarea Philippi was a hive of buzzing merchant and religious activity. Herod the Great was the first provincial ruler to embrace the cult of the emperor instituted during the reign of Augustus. He poured hundreds of talents of gold into rebuilding the city, still called Panias at that time, in Greco-Roman fashion to honor Augustus Caesar. A brilliant white palace he called the Augusteum sat above the city on a raised platform dedicated as a temple of Rome. The city’s location was just twenty-five miles north of the Sea of Galilee, placed at the crossroads of east-west traffic between Damascus and the port city of Tyre, and north-south traffic between Syria and Galilee. This prime real estate made it a nexus of economic and cultural interchange.

When Herod split his Jewish kingdom into tetrarchies before he died, he gave Galilee to his son Antipas, Samaria and Judea to Archelaus, and the northern regions, which included the old city Panias, to Philip. Philip renamed Panias after himself as Caesarea Philippi.

Its population was a hybrid mixture of Greek, Roman and Semitic residents. Its religion, a fusion of Greco-Roman polytheism. But its real power lay just outside the city, up the hill, a brief walk away to a sacred grotto, the cave sanctuary of Pan. When Philip had renamed the city, the local priesthood retained the title Panias for their holy site. Its location in the foothills of the cosmic mountain Hermon, in the ancient land of Bashan, made it a spiritual nexus. Bashan meant, “place of the serpent,” a heritage that went back to Og of Bashan, the last of the Rephaim giants that Joshua defeated. Bashan became the inheritance of the Jewish tribe of Dan, and the location for Dan’s idol worship of the golden calf of Ba’al. This area would forever be the bane of Israel, as prophesied by their forefather Jacob, “Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels
.”

It was to this sacred grotto that the two large eight-foot-tall beings walked as they passed the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi.

One was an overly built muscular male carrying a mace and wearing a conical cap of Canaanite deity. The other was a mature battle-maiden with buxom breasts and blood-stained battle skirt.

They walked along the river banks, up to its origin in a cave opening below a three hundred foot tall rock face. All along the face of the cliff, Greek-looking architectural frontispieces appeared carved out of the rock, creating a small necropolis of stone. What lived inside those elevated entrances was not readily apparent.

The beings came to the mouth of the grotto, where a large pool formed outside the cave as the headwaters of the Jordan River, a reflection of Eden’s own cosmic mountain and rivers of living waters. Lush bushes and trees all around hid a thousand eyes that watched the beings approach the cave’s entrance.

A small group of six nymphs met them to escort them inside. The nymphs wore transparent gowns and exotic jewelry. Nymphs were the seductive sexual courtiers of Pan, the god of passions and nature. The High Priestess, dressed in an exotic silken robe, embroidered with gems, had been expecting them.

“Welcome to our sacred space,” she said, “I am the Ob of Panias.”

She continued with a deep bow, reiterated by the others with her. “The sacred order of Pan welcomes, with humble submission, the most high god, Ba’al and his escort, the mother of the gods, Asherah.”

The gods were not so formally inclined. They had a job to do, and no time to delay. “Ob, we need your skills with necromancy,” said Ba’al. “The time is come to call up the hordes of the dead.”

They entered the large cave opening and followed the river back into the dark recesses. It had been so many ages since their primordial fall from heaven, that Ba’al and Asherah had forgotten their original names as Sons of God. Their gender was male, but some of them, like Asherah, were masquerading as goddesses, so they played the part to the full by modifying their bodies to appear female.

Ba’al had come so far in his quest for power. He began as an upstart deity before the Flood, when Anu and Inanna ruled the pantheon in Mesopotamia. When the Flood ravaged the earth and most of the gods were bound in Tartarus, Ba’al began to build his skills and strength until he became the most formidable of divinities, calling himself Ninurta, and then Marduk. It was not until he arrived in Canaan that he was able to ascend above the stars of heaven and become Elyon Ba’al, the Most High.

During the time of Israel’s forefather, Abraham, the archangels invaded his palace on Mount Sapan in the far reaches of the north and cast him into the molten magma that flowed beneath the earth. But he came back with a vengeance when he was vomited out of the great volcanic island of Thera during the time of King David, their anointed one.

Ba’al had been nursed back to health by Asherah on the shores of Tyre, and she conspired with him to betray Dagon, chief god of the Philistines, in order to renew Ba’al’s place as head of the pantheon. Over the generations of Israel’s growth in her Promised Land of inheritance, Ba’al and Asherah had managed to worm their way into the hearts of Israelites like a couple of parasites. Though Jews were expressly forbidden by Yahweh from worshiping other gods or making images of them, the populace nevertheless became infatuated with them and whored after the Canaanite deities. The extent to which Jews gave them obeisance is the extent to which the gods had freedom and power to occupy the land and keep it from being inherited by Yahweh’s people.

Ba’al was called by other names in various locations. He went by Ba’alzebul in the Philistine coastal cities, which meant, “Ba’al the Prince.” He had various Israelite locations named after him such as Ba’al-Berith, Ba’al-Gad, Ba’al-Peor, and others. When his palace on Sapan was destroyed by the angels, he decided not to rebuild it and took as his own the holy cosmic mountain where the gods assembled, and in whose foothills lay this very Cave of Pan. Mount Hermon was now called Ba’al-Hermon.

Asherah, on the other hand, had been a great support to Ba’al. She did not seek to usurp his authority and became his ally in the pantheon. She worked patiently through subterfuge and cunning intrigue. In the days of the Israelite monarchy, she had managed to infiltrate Israel with her cult prostitutes and Asherim poles placed right beside the Yahwist altars of sacrifice on the high places.

She and Ba’al had both cursed the day that the pious prig King Josiah of Israel uncovered long lost scrolls of the Law of God they had neglected in their backslidden ways. He reformed the culture, cleansed the holy temple, and purged Israel of her high places and cult objects of idolatry. The gods’ previous control diminished. Asherah and Ba’al wanted to ring Josiah’s neck for the inestimable damage he had done to their stronghold of dominion.

Belial then pushed Assyria to decimate the ten northern tribes of Israel and guided Babylon to exile Judah for seventy years. With the Greek Hellenizing effect of Alexander the Great and then Rome’s hegemony of worldwide control, Belial got his talons on Israel in a way Ba’al and Asherah were never able to. They were still delegated authority within the region, but as god of the world, Belial was the chief prince whom they supported.

Belial liked to rub it in their noses with the chores and responsibilities he gave them. Thus the current task at hand.

They arrived at a towering twenty foot tall golden statue in the center of the cave. The six nymphs held their torches high in adoration of the being: a satyr god with horns on his head, the torso of a man, and the hairy legs and hooves of a goat.

The Ob bowed before the graven image of Azazel, the ancient one. God of the desert wastelands and lord of satyrs. Jews called satyrs goat demons, but that was far too harsh and judgmental. The satyrs were almost all gone now, as a result of the Jewish desacralization of nature. Yahweh’s creation narrative was different from all the others in that it had divested the world around them of gods and spirits. It spoke of a natural world tamed in the hands of the Creator. Rather than revere the elemental spirits and see themselves as slaves of Mother Earth, the earth was instead seen as a wilderness of chaos that was to be harnessed and domesticated by man. Yahweh had the gall to command mankind to take dominion over the earth and subdue it by pushing back the chaos and bringing order through agricultural, economic and energy technology. Yahweh had depersonalized nature, which lessened the captivity of man to the gods of nature.

Pan was a god of nature, the last of the satyrs. He now stood before the group of nymphs and their visiting divinities. He had stepped out from a crevice in the rocks to meet with them, the sound of his hooves clacking softly on the rocky floor.

“Welcome to my lair, Most High Ba’alzebul, and Lady Asherah of the Sea.” Pan’s eyes moved greedily over Asherah’s voluptuous body.
What I wouldn’t give to ravage this bitch
, he thought. She was a goddess of sexual vigor and fertility, and he was a god of passion and sexuality. He would give her an experience of ecstasy she would never forget, with some bruises and marks to remember him by.

There was something about this satyr’s hairy primal nature that appealed to Asherah. She could smell his musty odor, and reveled in his lustful observation of her every move.

But she was here for an important job to do. If the goat touched her, she would crush his skull with Ba’al’s mace.

“Let us get to the Abyss,” she said with cold resistance.

Pan lifted his eyebrow, impressed with her bravado. He thought,
Such feistiness could prove more deeply satisfying with the conquering.
I wonder if Ba’al would be up for a gang rape?

“This way,” said Pan. He turned and led them deeper into the cave’s darkness. The torches were not all that necessary for the gods, since their eyes could see as well in darkness as in bright sunlight.

They came upon a large dark pit that cut deep into the earth. The nymphs circled the edge and used their torches to light incense censers before securing the torches in stands. The incense drifted hazily around the cavern and made the nymphs light-headed. The gods stood back and watched as the six nymphs poured chalices of honey, milk, and wine into the dark pit as a libation to the gods. They never heard the liquids hit the surface below because it was too long a drop.

What they could not see in the pitch black darkness at the bottom of that cliff were the primordial waters of the Abyss. These waters were both below the earth and above the firmament of the heavens where the throne of Yahweh rested on the waters. Leviathan, the seven-headed sea dragon, swam in this domain that gave it access to the many lakes, seas and rivers of the earth. Leviathan was the force of chaos that Yahweh had tamed for his purposes. He had emptied the sea monster’s jaws at the War of Gods and Men before the Great Flood. He crushed the heads of Leviathan at the Red Sea in order to establish his covenant with Israel, a covenant that was understood as a creation of the heavens and earth. Subjugation of the dragon and the waters was the mark of sovereign authority and the power to create order out of
tohu wabohu
, the formless void.

The gods were not here for Leviathan this evening. They were at Panias for another purpose. The waters of the Abyss also operated as a passageway that linked the earth above with the underworld below. Panias had a nickname throughout the land. It was called the Gates of Hades.

The Ob entered a trance-like state and swayed like a serpent amidst the floating clouds of incense. Her pupils expanded to fill her eyes. No whites were left, only black pools of darkness. Obs were necromancers who called up the dead. The Ob and her nymphs were opening the Gates of Hades.

The gods went to the ledge and cast a piece of silver into the pit as a payment for their request. Then, one after the other, they used a sacrificial dagger to cut their palms and squeeze their blood into the pit.

Next came the sacrifice. Usually, a black pig or other special animal was slaughtered and laid at the edge for its blood to mix with that of the supplicant, to aid in calling up the spirits. But there was none. The nymphs were confused. They were normally given the dead pig to lay at the edge. But there was no pig to offer.

The Ob twitched and spasmed and spoke in foreign languages in a voice not her own. It was the language of Babel.

The three gods approached the nymphs like feline predators, their eyes fixed, their steps smooth and ready to spring. Then the nymphs realized why there was no animal to sacrifice.
They
were to be the sacrifice.

Each god grabbed two nymphs, one in each hand, and broke their necks. One of them got out a scream before being stifled by death.

Pan was disappointed. That poor slave was his favorite. He would never be able to embrace her sexually again. He considered doing so with her dead body as a last goodbye, but thought better of it when the howling sounds ascended from the pit deep below. They had to complete the ritual.

They cut the throats of the nymphs and placed them at the edge of the cliff. Their blood dripped down the ledge from their limp, broken forms.

The howling increased.

The Ob fell to the floor in a fit of seizure. She called out in her magnified croaking voice, “NEPHILIM, ARISE! COME FORTH FROM THE DARK EARTH TO FULFILL YOUR DESTINY!”

The ground around the precipice rumbled and all went quiet. Deathly quiet. The air had been sucked out of the cave and down into the pit, and all sound with it.