4. The Red Land, the Red Man, and the Red Planet
a. The Red Land
But which planet is meant?
The clues thus far
examined, and to be examined, lead inexorably to Mars, the Red
Planet. Another clue to the role of Mars in this paleoancient
interplanetary war is found scattered throughout Spell 17 of the
Egyptian book of the Dead, where a cryptic reference occurs to the
“Children of Heaven” who have “entered into the eastern part of the
sky,” whence “there straightaway taketh place a battle in haven and
in the earth to its whole extent.”521
The reference to the
“eastern part of the sky” is an astronomical reference, to be sure,
but its meaning must not be associated merely as a reference to
where the Sun rises. The “eastern part of the sky” refers to those
regions of space and the planets that lie outside the Earth’s
orbit, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, whereas the “western” part of the
sky refers to those regions and planets inside the Earth’s orbit,
Venus, Mercury, and the Sun itself.522 Thus, if one
follows the mythological clues, the war
involved regions outside the Earth’s orbit, as well as the planet
Earth herself. The war, in other words, could have involved
the planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and possibly the satellite
bodies associated with them. This is our first real textual clue of
where the war took place.
There are other
indications that support this interpretation. Red, of course, was
the color of one of Egypt’s “Two Lands,” the other being black. As
Bruce Rux notes,
The Red Land was the Sacred Desert in which the Pharonic Pa-Ra-Emheb Stela named Ra as the engineer who measured the land and built the ‘protected place’ from which he could ‘ascend beautifully and traverse the skies,’ and the Sphinx in his own image and name (Ra-Harakhte). Red was also the original color of the Sphinx itself, evidenced by the traces of bright scarlet paint still found on its uraeus crest and beard in the British Museum. 523
Ra appears here as
nothing less than the Egyptian counterpart, indeed, perhaps merely
the Egyptian name, of Marduk, who
similarly measured the structure of the deep, and who, as a
Babylonian god, possessed his own “ekur” or pyramidal mountain
temple, a “protected place.” In other words, Ra and Marduk share
not only the role of “sun-gods”, but also performed similar
functions and were associated with similar technologies. Presumably
this is the reason the ancient Egyptians associated the color red
with the home of Ra and Sekhmet, and since the latter destroyed the
earth with “fire,” also associated red with evil. Note again, the
association of Ra with the Sphinx via yet another root, the color
which they both share.
b. The Red Man
A second association
tying Mars to events on Earth is man himself. This association is
no mystery to students of esoteric or astrological lore, for the
symbol for Mars, ♂ is the same as the symbol for man, ♂. But there
is more.
Red is the color of the clay from which Adam was made, and the color associated with the sea Moses crossed in the Exodus. Red is also the color the Egyptians painted the males of their race in hieroglyphs... In addition to its aforementioned meanings, Adom means “he of the ruddy complexion,” or “he who is red.” Adama, and its parallel Akkadian word Adamatu, both had the distinct meaning of “dark red soil” or “dark red earth.” That red soil was taken by Enki from the Abzu or Lower World, where he lived, and it was there that he made mankind.524
Alford, of course,
would have it that this merely refers to mankind’s life having been
“seeded” to Earth by life-bearing meteorites which set the process
of evolution in motion. But the ancient texts know of no
materialistic concept like evolution.
There is yet still
more: the term “Abzu” or “Absu” is not only a term referring to the
sun, but also for a boat or ship of some sort which reaches Enki’s
world. It may thus be associated with the “solar barques” which
ferried the deceased to the afterlife both in the Egyptian and
Celtic traditions.525 The texts thus
clearly suggest an inextricable relationship between mankind and
Mars, but also in some cases even associate the origins of mankind, and the Deluge itself, with
Mars.
And now the plot
really thickens...