Trade Secrets

[TisILeclerc]

Perhaps Gog is the man and Ma Gog is his wife, or mother?

[hvered]

Gog may be related to gough and/or variants thereof. Gough is said to be a) the Welsh coch (English: ‘red’), or more interestingly a reduced form of the Irish McGough which itself is an Anglicized form of Gaelic Mag Eochadha, a patronymic from the personal name Eochaidh (variant Eachaidh), ‘horseman’, both derivatives of ‘horse’.

The horse reference seems to be linked to 'goff' or 'gov', meaning blacksmith in Cornish and Breton. The giant wickerwork figures are oddly reminiscent of 'obby 'oss parades.

[Boreades]

Sounds promising. How do we link that to the same word cropping up in so many different places? Could it be another Sanskrit root word like Yoke or Yoga? It's been a long while since I last read the Bhagavad Gita, but there's plenty of End-Of-The-World characters there.

[Boreades]

I just hope I'm not going to have to re-read the Mahabharata to find this.

The Mahabharata is the longest known epic poem and has been described as "the longest poem ever written". Its longest version consists of over 100,000 shloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages. About 1.8 million words in total.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata

[TisILeclerc]

May I make a suggestion to help you in your worthy endeavour oh Borry?

Here's a link to the full kit and kaboodle. It says it is in Sanskrit but it looks quite English to me, unless I have the gift of tongues all of a sudden.

Open each chapter and the bits contained therein and do a search using the find option.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m01/index.htm

I'd give you a hand but I'm not worthy and I can hear the postman walking up the path.

[Boreades]

Doing some more digging on how Gog & Magog are supposed to have reached London....

The story goes that the Roman Emperor Diocletian had 33 daughters who were all wicked. To reform their ways the emperor found them all husbands, but the daughters were unhappy with them, plotted together, and murdered them all in their sleep one night by cutting their throats. As a punishment, all 33 daughters were put in a boat and set adrift, and they finally washed up on the shores of Britain (led by a sister called Alba). At the time this island was a wild and inhospitable place. But the daughters created a new population by mating with demons. The result was a race of giants, the most fearsome of whom were… Gog and Magog.

Ref : http://www.prayerforlondon.com/diocletians-daughters/

Oh those brazen hussies! But the number 33 is suggestive of something allegorical or astronomical.

Two giants named Gog and Magog used to live there before Brutus set up home, and upon arrival he defeated them, tamed them, and shackled them outside his palace, to become guardians of his estate. By the 15th century the story had sufficiently grown that Gog and Magog were considered guardians of the City of London, and took up their place in the annual Lord Mayor’s parade. And ever since Londoners have adopted them to their hearts as protectors of the City.

http://www.prayerforlondon.com/gog-and-magog/

That's a nice Creation Myth, even if does bother people who Pray For London.

But .....The notion of Alba and her wicked sisters copulating with demons to produce an elder race of giants is highly suggestive of a similar tale in the Book of Enoch. Excluded from the Biblical canon by all but the Ethiopan Orthodox Church, the Book of Enoch recounts the erotic coupling between the daughters of Cain and a group of fallen angels known as the Watchers, Elohim or Grigori. These beings are alleged to have taught mankind the arts of writing, blacksmithing, sorcery, herblore, astrology, mirrors, cosmetics and the courses of the Moon. All the tricks of the trade. The offspring produced by this lovemaking between witch and devil was a race of giants known as the Nephilim, which are described in the Book of Genesis as “the heroes of old, the men of renown”.

http://www.bangthebore.org/archives/2258

Which is slap-bang straight back into one of the greatest Creation Myths of all. England's dark and satanic mills, with a bit of porn to make it spicy?

[hvered]

In the legend of Britain, Brutus had a palace on the site of the present Guildhall in London, where the statues are housed when not being paraded.

According to its website

Guildhall has been the City powerhouse since the twelfth century. In an era when the Lord Mayor of London rivalled the monarch for influence and prestige, this was where he and the ruling merchant class held court, fine-tuned the laws and trading regulations that helped create London’s wealth.

Guildhall is between St Paul's, the terminus of the east-west A4, and Bishopsgate, the terminus of the north-south Ermine Street, ideally placed for national and international trade. Do you happen to know if there's a masonic connection?

[Boreades]

Do you happen to know if there's a masonic connection?

S'funny you should ask that. I've been mulling over this Emperor Diocletian connection. Logically, it makes no sense, as he (according to orthodozy) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian - "was a Roman emperor from 284 to 305" . Presumably 284 to 305 AD, and a long while after Brutus is supposed to have waded ashore in Totnes.

After having dragged the Roman Empire back from the brink of collapse and stabilising it for c.100 years, what did he do?
Diocletian left the imperial office on 1 May 305, and became the first Roman emperor to voluntarily abdicate the position. He lived out his retirement in his palace on the Dalmatian coast, tending to his vegetable gardens.
Going on gardening leave? How very British!

Anyway, this story of Diocletian and his 33 fornicating daughters keeps appearing all over the place. e.g. the myth states that the Roman Emperor Diocletian had 33 wicked daughters whom he married off to 33 husbands who curbed their unsettling ways. However the daughters were so wicked, led by the eldest sister Alba, they plotted to cut the throats of their husbands as they slept. As punishment for this crime, they were set adrift in a boat with a half year’s rations of food, shunned forever. They drifted ashore the isles of what later became “Albion” (named after the eldest).

Ref: http://downedrobin.blogspot.co.uk/2014/ ... -fail.html
and http://www.technogypsie.com/faerie/?tag=diocletian

But where's the explanation? Why are there 33 daughters, and no mention of any mother(s) or sons? Never mind how any boat could drift from Rome to Britain. It's ridiculous! The only other place I know of with 33 as a symbolic number is the (supposed) 33 degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. If we play with that notion, - "Goëmagot (Gogmagog), who stood in stature twelve cubits" (or the pair of them) - could allude to the twin pillars of Boaz and Jachin which stood in the porch of Solomon's Temple, the first Temple in Jerusalem.

From there, it's a leap. I'll offer a rather feeble suggestion that the whole "Gog and Magog in London" story might be part of an allegorical tale that explains how Freemasonry was established in Britain as the New Jerusalem, transplanted from Troy/Babylon/Israel.

I say feeble because the 33 degrees are associated with Scottish Rite Freemasonry, not the English version, which only has three degrees (or four, if you count the Royal Arch degree), and I don't know why the Guildhall in London would be associated with Scottish Rite Freemasonry, unless we take another leap and start on the Temple area of London as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple,_London

Actually, in this feeble house of cards, the strongest possibility is via the Roman Army. Was Diocletian a masonic Grand Master? I've no idea, but Freemasonry in England, Scotland, Ireland and France has propogated / survived in arduous times most strongly via military regiments. The miltary connection is also a serious explanation for how Freemasonry got off to such a strong start in the USA, and why the British miltary leaders never seriously tried to defeat their US fraternal brethren.

[Mick Harper]

I think the connection is Mithras.

[Boreades]

Aha, excellent! That's the name I was trying to remember. As in, lying awake, thinking "what's the name of the god that Roman soldiers adopted?" :-)

Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation, with ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries

Modern-day masons have three or four grades of initiation, with ritual meals (the "festive board"), and the handshakes.