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For the past century or so, the dominant trend in classical circles has been to
deny any and all reality to the ancient gods. Richard Seaford, a world-renowned expert
on ancient Greek religion, made the point most forcefully, “Greek deities are
human constructions.” It follows according to this prevailing
orthodoxy that the Greek myths telling of the great gods’ lives and loves are
the stuff of fiction, projections of human affairs onto an
imaginary Olympus as it were. It is our opinion that such views are
wrong from A to Z and that the Greek gods were real. We also maintain that the myths
attached to the gods were empirically based and described catastrophic natural
events during a recent prehistoric period. A few examples will suffice to
illustrate the profound differences in our two positions. One of the most familiar tropes in Greek
mythology is that the Sun God Helios sees everything; hence the epithet ‘all seeing’.
In the Iliad for example, Helios is invoked as, “You who see all things.”
The very same claim appears in the Odyssey and in various plays of the great dramatist.
This trope is employed for comedic effect and a famous scene in the Iliad
wherein Zeus assures Hera that their furtive love making will be invisible
even to Helios thanks to the golden cloud he has created. quote,
”Not even Helios can look at us through it although beyond all others his light
has the sharpest vision.” Why exactly Helios was ascribed sharp
vision has never been answered. The conventional explanation, entirely ad
hoc in nature, maintains that inasmuch as the solar orb travels across the
entirety of the sky with each passing day, he must perforce be capable of
seeing anything and everything. Martin West's opinion is representative
in this regard, “The Sun's capacity for seeing everything that people do
qualifies him as a supervisor of justice, or at least gives him a valuable role as
the god of justice's eye and as a trusty witness.” Interestingly enough, Zeus shares the
very same ability with Helios. In “Works and Days”, Hesiod states that,
”The eye of Zeus sees all things.” Far from being an error on the part of
the Boeotian bard, the same idea is current among the early poets.
Thus Sophocles makes reference to the ever vigilant eye of Zeus Morios,
”For the sleepless eye of the Morian Zeus beholds it.” Here we find an unequivocal reference to
the round eye or kuklos of Zeus. Yet, kuklos is the very phrase employed by Aeschylus
to describe Helios's all-seeing eye. It is significant that a cognate term is
employed to denote the all-seeing eye of the Sun in Indic lore as well, namely
”cakra”, commonly translated “wheel”. Quote “With his eye on men, he sits in the
middle of heaven.” So too the Indic Sun God is described as
all-seeing and wide of vision, just like the Greek Zeus. How or why the ancient Sun God should be
equipped with the wheel-like eye remains unknown. Certainly there is nothing about the
present appearance of the solar orb that would suggest a wheel-like eye.
Especially telling are traditions reporting that Zeus launched
lightning-like fire from his eye. Aeschylus described the Greek Thunder
God as follows. “The jealous eye of God hurls the lightning down.”
The same conception is evident in Euripides’ Bacchae, “Unveil the Lightning's Eye.”
With apparent reference to these archaic idioms preserved by the great dramatists,
the Greek grammarian Hesychius observed that the phrase ‘Eye of Zeus’ meant ‘a flash of lightning’.
As we have documented elsewhere, analogous traditions will be found
around the globe. Indeed, a widespread tradition views lightning as the angry
glance of the Sun God's eye, this despite the fact that the Sun and
lightning have no conceivable relationship in today's sky.
In order to understand the traditions before us, it is first necessary to
identify an ‘obvious’ celestial prototype for Zeus's lightning-hurling eye.
’Obvious’ that is, for prehistoric sky watchers around the globe.
Consider the image depicted in Figure 1, analogs of which are ubiquitous in rock
art everywhere. Can it be doubted that, were such an astronomical apparition to present
itself in the Northern circumpolar heaven, traditions of a Sky God Cyclopean
eye would be virtually certain to follow? Now consider the image depicted in
Figure 2, a close variation on the previous image, representing a slightly
later phase in the evolutionary history of the polar configuration, whereupon
fiery lightning-like filaments radiate out across the disk of the Sun.
It is our view that the global traditions of a lightning-emanating eye
likely have their origin here. It will be noted that the central eye is
composed of the conjoined orbs of Mars and Venus. Note further the Greek word for
’lightning’= ‘asterope’ preserves the inherent link to a material celestial
body inasmuch as ‘aster’ denotes ‘star’. This etymology alone offers compelling
circumstantial evidence for the conclusion that the Greek concept of
’lightning’ was quite literally a star-based phenomenon.
The archaic phrase “star-flung Thunderbolt”, preserved in an orphic hymn, points to
the same conclusion, needless to say. Now consider the related image of the
so-called Sun cross. Prehistoric in nature, the image in question resembles nothing so much as a
wheel centered on a solar disk, a wheel-like eye as it were.
If the Sun God's central cyclopean eye was conceptualized as a wheel-like
object, it follows a descending orb of fiery lightning-like rays might well be
conceptualized as the act of seeing. Hence we understand the indissoluble
connection between solar radiation and the act of seeing in various ancient
languages. Yet Zeus's eye also flash lightning and thus we must expect to
find an otherwise bizarre connection between the act of seeing and
lightning-like pyrotechnics. The concrete nature of this meteorological imagery is most explicit
in the Egyptian language wherein “m33” denotes the act of “seeing”, while “m3wt” denotes “lightning” or
”lightning-like radiation”. Yet, the very same word also denotes the spokes of the wheel.
The startling extension of meaning, apart from the cosmogram depicted in Figure 3,
where the Sun's rays are quite literally the spokes of a wheel, an analogous semantic development is
apparent in ancient Greek where ”derkomai” denotes “to see/look”,
but also “flashing fire” or ”lightning from his eyes”. Ruth Bielfeldt, surveying the Greek
testimony, posits a direct connection between the act of seeing and fire. Quote:
"In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, we find the idea that fire, light and vision
form an inseparable unity. Not only is fire endowed with sight, but the eyes are
in turn also conceived as fire-like, their glance figured as spraying sparks.
Homer considers eyes and glances as themselves emissive of fire.”
Such ideas have no conceivable basis in human biology or in Greek philosophical
speculation. Nor, for that matter do they reflect the projection of human ideas
onto the celestial landscape. Rather the exact opposite. Such traditions were directly inspired
by astronomical events namely the awe-inspiring spectacle
presented by a lightning-hurling eye in the northern circumpolar sky.
If the classic Ra sign in Figure 1 was conceptualized as a Cyclopean-eyed Sun,
the second image illustrates the emission of fiery lightning-like
radiation from the God's central eye, universally conceptualized as a fiery
glance, or the act of seeing. Insofar as the visible ray-like structures emanating from the central
eye pervaded the entire cosmos, defined in ancient times as a unified heaven and
Earth, it follows that the Sun God saw everything that transpired in the cosmos.
In short, there can be no denying the dramatic contrast between the naturalist
historical reconstruction offered by Talbott and myself, and the projectionist
interpretation offered by orthodox scholarship. In a new book on Zeus published by the
special series on gods and heroes of the ancient world, Ken Dowden begins by stating “To us
Zeus is a mere fiction...” And then he gets downright dismissive and condescending, quote,
”How could the Greeks have worshipped such an empty god?... From beginning to end
Zeus has been unseen, operating the causal system of the universe in
mysterious ways, and underlying every event... The mythology was only a way of talking
about Zeus, a figure of speech.” ”No one believed that the gods actually
had a palace at the top of a mountain in Thessaly. Mythology was always a parable, a
transposition of the mysterious into another language.” End of quote.
It would be difficult to imagine a more erroneous opinion or one more
disrespectful to the Greeks themselves. The manifold mythology surrounding Greece's greatest god,
far from being a parable or figment of imagination, accurately described
terrifying planetary interactions of a catastrophic nature, albeit in
figurative language. Thus it is that sky watchers around the
globe witnessed lightning being launched from Zeus's eye. Make no mistake about it,
Zeus was seen, Zeus was real.
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