The 12th Planet (42 page)

Fig. 119

Fig. 120

In Babylon, the festival followed a very strict and detailed ritual; each portion, act, and prayer had a traditional reason and a specific meaning. The ceremonies started on the first day of Nisan—then the first month of the year—coinciding with the spring equinox. For eleven days, the other gods with a celestial status joined Marduk in a prescribed order. On the twelfth day, each of the other gods departed to his own abode, and Marduk was left alone in his splendor. The parallel to the appearance of Marduk within the planetary system, his "visit" with the eleven other members of the solar system, and the separation on the twelfth day—leaving the Twelfth God to go on as King of the Gods, but in isolation from them—is obvious.

The ceremonies of the New Year Festival paralleled the course of the Twelfth Planet. The first four days, matching Marduk's passage by the first four planets (Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn), were days of preparation. At the end of the fourth day, the rituals called for marking the appearance of the planet Iku (Jupiter) within sight of Marduk. The celestial Marduk was nearing the place of the celestial battle; symbolically, the high priest began reciting the "Epic of Creation"—the tale of that celestial battle.

The night passed without sleep. When the tale of the celestial battle had been recited, and as the fifth day was breaking, the rituals called for the twelvefold proclamation of Marduk as "The Lord," affirming that in the aftermath of the celestial battle there were now twelve members of the solar system. The recitations then named the twelve members of the solar system and the twelve constellations of the zodiac.

Sometime during the fifth day, the god Nabu—Marduk's son and heir—arrived by boat from his cult center, Borsippa. But he entered Babylon's temple compound only on the sixth day, for by then Nabu was a member of the Babylonian pantheon of twelve and the planet assigned to him was Mars—the sixth planet.

The Book of Genesis informs us that in six days "the Heaven and the Earth and all their host" were completed. The Babylonian rituals commemorating the celestial events that resulted in the creation of the asteroid belt and Earth were also completed in the first six days of Nisan.

On the seventh day, the festival turned its attention to Earth. Though details of the rituals on the seventh day are scarce, H. Frankfort
(Kingship and the Gods)
believes that they involved an enactment by the gods, led by Nabu, of the liberation of Marduk from his imprisonment in the "Mountains of Lower Earth." Since texts have been found that detail epic struggles between Marduk and other claimants to the rulership of Earth, we can surmise that the events of the seventh day were a reenactment of Marduk's struggle for supremacy on Earth (the "Seventh"), his initial defeats, and his final victory and usurpation of the powers.

On the eighth day of the New Year Festival in Babylon, Marduk, victorious on Earth, as the forged
Enuma Elish
had made him in the heavens, received the supreme powers. Having bestowed them on Marduk, the gods, assisted by the king and populace, then embarked, on the ninth day, on a ritual procession that took Marduk from his house within the city's sacred precinct to the "House of Akitu," somewhere outside the city. Marduk and the visiting eleven gods stayed there through the eleventh day; on the twelfth day, the gods dispersed to their various abodes, and the festival was over.

Of the many aspects of the Babylonian festival that reveal its earlier, Sumerian origins, one of the most significant was that which pertained to the House of Akitu. Several studies, such as
The Babylonian Akitu Festival
by S. A. Pallis, have established that this house was featured in religious ceremonies in Sumer as early as the third millennium
B.C.
The essence of the ceremony was a holy procession that saw the reigning god leave his abode or temple and go, via several stations, to a place well out of town. A special ship, a "Divine Boat," was used for the purpose. Then the god, successful in whatever his mission was at the A.KI.TI House, returned to the city's quay by the same Divine Boat, and retraced his course back to the temple amid feasting and rejoicing by the king and populace.

The Sumerian term A.KI.TI (from which the Babylonian
akitu
derived) literally meant "build on Earth life." This, coupled with the various aspects of the mysterious journey, leads us to conclude that the procession symbolized the hazardous but successful voyage of the Nefilim from their abode to the seventh planet, Earth.

Excavations conducted over some twenty years on the site of ancient Babylon, brilliantly correlated with Babylonian ritual texts, enabled teams of scholars led by F. Wetzel and F. H. Weissbach
(Das Hauptheiligturn des Marduks in Babylon)
to reconstruct the holy precinct of Marduk, the architectural features of his ziggurat, and the Processional Way, portions of which were reerected at the Museum of the Ancient Near East, in East Berlin.

The symbolic names of the seven stations and the epithet of Marduk at each station were given in both Akkadian and Sumerian—attesting both to the antiquity and to the Sumerian origins of the procession and its symbolism.

The first station of Marduk, at which his epithet was "Ruler of the Heavens," was named "House of Holiness" in Akkadian and "House of Bright Waters" in Sumerian. The god's epithet at the second station is illegible; the station itself was named "Where the Field Separates." The partly mutilated name of the third station began with the words "Location facing the planet ..."; and the god's epithet there changed to "Lord of Poured-Out Fire."

The fourth station was called "Holy Place of Destinies," and Marduk was called "Lord of the Storm of the Waters of
An
and
Ki."
The fifth station appeared less turbulent. It was named "The Roadway," and Marduk assumed the title "Where the Shepherd's Word Appears." Smoother sailing was also indicated at the sixth station, called "The Traveler's Ship," where Marduk's epithet changed to "God of the Marked-Out Gateway."

The seventh station was the
Bit Akitu
("house of building life on Earth"). There, Marduk took the title "God of the House of Resting."

It is our contention that the seven stations in the procession of Marduk represented the space trip of the Nefilim from their planet to Earth; that the first "station," the "House of Bright Waters," represented the passage by Pluto; the second ("Where the Field Separates") was Neptune; the third, Uranus; the fourth—a place of celestial storms—Saturn. The fifth, where "The Roadway" became clear, "where the shepherd's word appears," was Jupiter. The sixth, where the journey switched to "The Traveler's Ship," was Mars.

And the seventh station was Earth—the end of the journey, where Marduk provided the "House of Resting" (the god's "house of building life on Earth").

•

How did the "Aeronautics and Space Administration" of the Nefilim view the solar system in terms of the space flight to Earth?

Logically—and in fact—they viewed the system in two parts. The one zone of concern was the zone of flight, which embraced the space occupied by the seven planets extending from Pluto to Earth. The second group, beyond the zone of navigation, was made up of four celestial bodies—the Moon, Venus, Mercury, and the Sun. In astronomy and divine genealogy, the two groups were considered separate.

Genealogically, Sin (as the Moon) was the head of the group of the "Four." Shamash (as the Sun) was his son, and Ishtar (Venus), his daughter. Adad, as Mercury, was the Uncle, Sin's brother, who always kept company with his nephew Shamash and (especially) with his niece Ishtar.

The "Seven," on the other hand, were lumped together in texts dealing with the affairs of both gods and men, and with celestial events. They were "the seven who judge," "seven emissaries of Anu, their king," and it was after them that the number seven was consecrated. There were "seven olden cities"; cities had seven gates; gates had seven bolts; blessings called for seven years of plenty; curses, for famines and plagues lasting seven years; divine weddings were celebrated by "seven days of lovemaking"; and so on and on.

During solemn ceremonies like those that accompanied the rare visits to Earth by Anu and his consort, the deities representing the Seven Planets were assigned certain positions and ceremonial robes, while the Four were treated as a separate group. For example, ancient rules of protocol stated: "The deities Adad, Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar shall be seated in the court until daybreak."

In the skies, each group was supposed to stay in its own celestial zone, and the Sumerians assumed that there was a "celestial bar" keeping the two groups apart. "An important astral-mythological text," according to A. Jeremias
(The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient Near East),
deals with some remarkable celestial event, when the Seven "stormed in upon the Celestial Bar." In this upheaval, which apparently was an unusual alignment of the Seven Planets, "they made allies of the hero Shamash [the Sun] and of the valiant Adad [Mercury]"—meaning, perhaps, that all exerted a gravitational pull in a single direction. "At the same time, Ishtar, seeking a glorious dwelling place with Anu, strove to become Queen of Heaven"—Venus was somehow shifting its location to a more "glorious dwelling place." The greatest effect was on Sin (the Moon). "The seven who fear not the laws ... the Light-giver Sin had violently besieged." According to this text, the appearance of the Twelfth Planet saved the darkened Moon and made it "shine forth in the heavens" once again.

The Four were located in a celestial zone the Sumerians termed GIR.
H
E.A ("celestial waters where rockets are confused"), MU.
H
E ("confusion of spacecraft"), or UL.
H
E ("band of confusion"). These puzzling terms make sense once we realize that the Nefilim considered the heavens of the solar system in terms of their space travel. Only recently, the engineers of Comsat (Communications Satellite Corporation) discovered that the Sun and Moon "trick" satellites and "shut them off." Earth satellites could be "confused" by showers of particles from solar flares or by changes in the Moon's reflection of infrared rays. The Nefilim, too, were aware that rocket ships or spacecraft entered a "zone of confusion" once they passed Earth and neared Venus, Mercury, and the Sun.

Separated from the Four by an assumed celestial bar, the Seven were in a celestial zone for which the Sumerians used the term UB. The
ub
consisted of seven parts called (in Akkadian)
giparu
("night residences"). There is little doubt that this was the origin of Near Eastern beliefs in the "Seven heavens."

The seven "orbs" or "spheres" of the
ub
comprised the Akkadian
kishsharu
("the entirety"). The term's origin was the Sumerian SHU, which also implied "that part which was the most important," the Supreme. The Seven Planets were therefore sometimes called "the Seven Shiny Ones SHU.NU"—the Seven who "in the Supreme Part rest."

The Seven were treated in greater technical detail than the Four. Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian celestial lists described them with various epithets and listed them in their correct order. Most scholars, assuming that the ancient texts could not possibly have dealt with planets beyond Saturn, have found it difficult to identify correctly the planets described in the texts. But our own findings make identification and understanding of the names' meanings relatively easy.

First to be encountered by the Nefilim approaching the solar system was
Pluto.
The Mesopotamian lists name this planet SHU.PA ("supervisor of the SHU"), the planet that guards the approach to the Supreme Part of the solar system.

As we shall
see,
the Nefilim could land on Earth only if their spaceship were launched from the Twelfth Planet well before reaching Earth's vicinity. They could thus have crossed the orbit of Pluto not only as inhabitants of the Twelfth Planet but also as astronauts in a moving spaceship. An astronomical text said that the planet Shupa was the one where "the deity Enlil fixed the destiny for the Land"—where the god, in charge of a spacecraft, set the right course for the planet Earth and the Land of Sumer.