Travis Simpkins: Ancient

Showing posts with label Ancient. Show all posts

Saturday, May 7, 2022

A Practical Guide to the Runes. Their Uses in Divination and Magick. Lisa Peschel

My wife recently found a set of Runes she liked at an Occult shop, but they didn't come with any accompanying instructions. So, I picked up a copy of "A Practical Guide to the Runes" by Lisa Peschel. This is a helpful and easy to follow book, with basic information on Rune Divination and Magick.

EIHWAZ the yew, URUZ the wild ox, KENAZ the hearth fire. Created by the Nordic and Germanic tribes of northern Europe, the runes began as a magickal system of pictographs representing the forces and objects in nature.

With over 200,000 sold, this guidebook will help you discover the oracular nature of the runes and how to use them as a magickal tool for insight, protection, and luck.

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

The Book of Enoch. Apocrypha. The Bible. The Watchers

It has been a while since I last read through "The Book of Enoch." It's a good one to revisit, a fairly short read.

The Bible, as we hold it today, is esteemed by many religious institutions and especially Conservative Christians to be the inspired, inerrant Word of God. This doctrinal position affirms that the Bible is unlike all other books or collections of works in that it is free of error due to having been given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). While no other text can claim this same unique authority, the Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish religious work, ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, which played a crucial role in forming the worldview of the authors of the New Testament, who were not only familiar with it but quoted it in the New Testament, Epistle of Jude, Jude 1:14 15, and is attributed there to "Enoch the Seventh from Adam" (1 En 60:8). The text was also utilized by the community that originally collected and studied the Dead Sea Scrolls. While some churches today include Enoch as part of the biblical canon (for example the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church), other Christian denominations and scholars accept it only as having historical or theological non-canonical interest and frequently use or assigned it as supplemental materials within academic settings to help students and scholars discover or better understand cultural and historical context of the early Christian Church. The Book of Enoch provides commentators valuable insight into what many ancient Jews and early Christians believed when, God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets (Heb. 1:1). As Dr. Michael S. Heiser in the Introduction to his important book Reversing Hermon so powerfully notes: For those to whom 1 Enoch sounds unfamiliar, this is the ancient apocalyptic literary work known popularly (but imprecisely) as the Book of Enoch. Most scholars believe that 1 Enoch was originally written in Aramaic perhaps as early as the 3rd century B.C. The oldest fragments of the book were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and dated to roughly the second century B.C. This places the book squarely in the middle of what scholars call the Second Temple Period (ca. 500 B.C. 70 A.D.), an era more commonly referred to as the Intertestamental Period. This book will use the more academic designation ( Second Temple Period ) [...] The Watcher story of 1 Enoch, as many readers will recall, is an expansion of the episode described in Genesis 6:1-4, where the sons of God (Hebrew: beney ha- elohim) came in to the daughters of man (Gen 6:4; ESV). Consequently, Watchers is the Enochian term of choice (among others) for the divine sons of God. While the story of this supernatural rebellion occupies scant space in Genesis, it received considerable attention during the Second Temple Period [...] The Enochian version of the events of Gen 6:1-4 preserves and transmits the original Mesopotamian context for the first four verses of the flood account. Every element of Gen 6:1-4 has a Mesopotamian counterpoint a theological target that provides the rationale for why these four verses wound up in the inspired text in the first place. Connections to that backstory can be found in the Old Testament, but they are scattered and unsystematically presented. This is not the case with Second Temple Jewish literature like 1 Enoch. Books like 1 Enoch preserve all of the Mesopotamian touchpoints with Gen 6:1-4 when presenting their expanded retelling of the events of that biblical passage. The Book of Enoch is therefore intended to be an important supplemental resource for assisting serious researchers and students in the study of the Bible.

Monday, November 29, 2021

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Ancient Literature. Babylon

I'm currently taking a break from all this modernity and revisiting my old friends, Gilgamesh and Enkidu...

Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu are the only heroes to have survived from the ancient literature of Babylon, immortalized in this epic poem that dates back to the third millennium BC. Together they journey to the Spring of Youth, defeat the Bull of Heaven and slay the monster Humbaba. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh’s grief and fear of death are such that they lead him to undertake a quest for eternal life. A timeless tale of morality, tragedy and pure adventure, The Epic of Gilgamesh is a landmark literary exploration of man’s search for immortality.
N. K. Sandars’s lucid, accessible translation is prefaced by a detailed introduction that examines the narrative and historical context of the work. In addition, there is a glossary of names and a map of the Ancient Orient.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

"America B.C. - Ancient Settlers in the New World" by Barry Fell

America B.C.

Ancient Settlers in the New World

by Barry Fell

Pocket Books, 1976

Notes by Travis Simpkins

In the opening pages of his landmark 1976 book, America BC, Barry Fell states: "America, as we now realize, is a treasure house of records of man's achievement upon the high seas in bygone ages. Even more so are our inscribed rocks and tablets a heritage from a forgotten era of colonization." Thus begins his thesis that North America was visited, explored and inhabited by Europeans and others long before Columbus set sail in 1492. The bulk of Fell's text centers on the ancient Celts, who Fell believes settled areas of present day New England in about 800 B.C. Various stone chambers found in the eastern woods are testament to their presence and present historical and cultural evidence of their handiwork. The complex of stone chambers and monuments at Mystery Hill (now called America's Stonehenge) in Salem, New Hampshire are central to Fell's research and provide the most intriguing clues to support his theory… including a sophisticated positioning of the stones to correspond to astronomical alignments that facilitate a religious purpose and serve as a practical calendar.

Long stretches of dry analysis that examine the ancient system of Ogam language and writing utilized by the Celts comprises a large part of the text. Such details might not interest the casual reader, but provide necessary background information to support Fell's hypothesis. He concludes, "We find in New England some two hundred stone chambers, many of which are oriented and constructed in such manner as to make them serve as astronomical observatories for the regulation of the calendar of festivals. There are also systems of standing stones that indicate a calendar divided into eight half-seasons, all based on the annual cycle of the sun's motions in the sky… we are obliged to conclude that they are the work of ancient Celts."

The 294-page book also makes reference to the Phoenicians and the Egyptians as other ancient visitors to the New World and provides some artifacts to support this, but maintains that these other groups mainly sought to deal in trading with the resident Celts. Suffice to say, many critics have dismissed Fell's work as being fanciful and far-fetched. All in all, the book, which differs greatly from mainstream historical teachings, presents an interesting case that if read with an open mind, can offer serious pause for thought.