Legends and Mythology

Rise of the Phoenix: There are Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Egyptian, and Native American counterparts of the Phoenix. (Fêng-Huang, Ho-oo, Firebird, Benu, and Yel respectively). All of these birds are identified with the sun."A mythical bird that never dies, the phoenix flies far ahead to the front, always scanning the landscape and distant space. It represents our capacity for vision, for collecting sensory information about our environment and the events unfolding within it. The phoenix, with its great beauty, creates intense excitement and deathless inspiration." - The Feng Shui Handbook, feng shui Master Lam Kam Chuen

Classical Arabian Phoenix: Perhaps the most well known, the Arabian phoenix was a fabulous mythical bird, said to be as large as an eagle, with brilliant scarlet and gold plumage and a melodious cry. Making it's home near a cool well, the Phoenix would appear at dawn every morning to sing a song so enchanting that even the great sun god Apollo would stop to listen. It was said that only one phoenix existed at any one time, and it is very long-lived with a life span of 500 years, 540 years, 1000 years, 1461 years or even 12,994 years (according to various accounts). As the end of its life approached, the phoenix would build a pyre nest of aromatic branches and spices such as myrrh, sets it on fire, and is consumed in the flames. After three days the birth -- or as some legends say a rebirth -- the phoenix arises from the ashes. According to some sources, the phoenix arose from the midst of the flames. The young phoenix gathers the ashes of its predecessor into an egg of myrrh and takes it to Heliopolis, the city of the sun, to deposit it on the alter of the sun god. A symbolic representation of the Death and rebirth of the sun. It is also described as being either eagle like or heron like. It lives on dew, killing nothing and crushing nothing that it touches. Generally considered the king of birds. It has alternatively been called the bird of the sun, of Assyria, of Arabia, of the Ganges, the long-lived bird and the Egyptian bird...

Are the myths and stories about hidden treasures true? On the image below, you can see typical Inca archaeological artifacts. The Incas have created lots of statuettes, ornaments, many of them can be seen in museums across the planet. The Peruvian authorities prohibit anyone from taking out archaeological artifacts of the country, but even so, many objects are still being smuggled out of the country. The first person to have been accused for taking out archaeological values was Hiram Bingham himself. He is said to have taken around 5.000 artifacts from Inca sites that he had discovered. Bingham has found many objects that can be considered treasures, but not of very high value. For example, at the archaeological site of Machu Picchu he has found objects made of stone, bronze, ceramic and obsidian, but no gold or silver.

The Incas were well known for producing large numbers of silver and gold objects, like the real size gold replicas of maize and other plants, that were found in Cuzco.The Inca treasures found by the conquistadores, archaeologists, travelers were primarily artistical creations, of great value to scientists, but of no little material value.  The Incas often used precious metals like gold, silver, copper to make statuettes and decorated them with precious stones, such as emeralds. The values of the statues varies, depending not only on its material, but also on what it represents, when it was made and how well preserved they are.  Many legends, stories speak about the supposed existence of large amounts of precious objects, anything from gemstones to golden statuettes. Amateurs seem more likely to believe the myths, but specialists also show curiosity to studying them. What we see in movies about hidden Worlds and large amounts of gold being uncovered, death traps like in Indiana Jones, for example, are rather fiction, products of imagination. So are there any beliefs based on true facts about Inca treasures? Yes! There are, but one has to study them in detail in order to understand them...

To begin, here are seven reasons why it is very obvious that Athena is Eve:

1. The Judeo-Christian tradition traces the current state of humanity back to a woman, a serpent, and a tree. Athena's idol-image shows us the woman and the serpent, but where is the tree? The very core of the statue is wood—a tree. In both the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions, a tree is at the core of what happened between a woman and a serpent. (the term tree is often used symbolically to represent a person or an angel for example, "the bad tree is hewn down and cast into the lake of fire").

2. Athena’s very name speaks of Eve. In Genesis 3:4, the serpent promised Eve that when she ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “you shall not surely die.” In the most ancient Greek writing, the name of the goddess first appears as ATHANA. The word THANATOS in ancient Greek means death. A-THANATOS signifies deathlessness. A-thana is the shortened form of A-thanatos meaning the deathless one, or more specifically, the embodiment of the serpent’s promise to Eve that she would never die, but would be as the gods, knowing good and evil. Through Athana(tos), later called Athena, the serpent has made good his promise to Eve (Athena and Eden, Chapter 3).

3. Note that the serpent rises up next to Athena as a friend. In Genesis, Yahweh had condemned the serpent to crawl on its belly as a deceiver of humanity, yet all who entered the Parthenon to worship or admire the great statue were forced to look up to both Athena and the serpent. That is because the Greek religious system, the very opposite of the Judeo-Christian, was based on the notion that the serpent had enlightened humanity in paradise.

4. Athena holds Nike in her right hand, the hand of power. Nike symbolizes Victory—Eve’s victory for humanity when she ate the fruit offered by the serpent. Athena is the only goddess in Greek art who is ever pictured holding Nike...

There are countless deities associated with love and/or sexuality in every culture throughout history, here are some..

Aphrodite: In Greek mythology, Aphrodite is the goddess of love, beauty and sexual rapture. According to Hesiod, she was born when Uranus (the father of the gods) was castrated by his son Cronus . Cronus threw the severed genitals into the ocean which began to churn and foam about them. From the aphros ("sea foam") arose Aphrodite, and the sea carried her to either Cyprus or Cythera. Hence she is often referred to as Kypris and Cytherea. Homer calls her a daughter of Zeus and Dione. After her birth, Zeus was afraid that the gods would fight over Aphrodite's hand in marriage so he married her off to the smith god Hephaestus the steadiest of the gods. He could hardly believe his good luck and used all his skills to make the most lavish jewels for her. He made her a girdle of finely wrought gold and wove magic into the filigree work. That was not very wise of him, for when she wore her magic girdle no one could resist her, and she was all too irresistible already.

 She loved gaiety and glamour and was not at all pleased at being the wife of sooty, hard-working Hephaestus. Aphrodite loved and was loved by many gods and mortals. Among her mortal lovers, the most famous was perhaps Adonis . Some of her sons are Eros, Anteros, Hymenaios and Aeneas (with her Trojan lover Anchises. She is accompanied by the Graces. Her festival is the Aphrodisiac which was celebrated in various centers of Greece and especially in Athens and Corinth. Her priestesses were not prostitutes but women who represented the goddess and sexual intercourse with them was considered just one of the methods of worship. Aphrodite was originally an old-Asian goddess, similar to the Mesopotamian Ishtar and the Syro-Palestinian goddess Ashtart. Her attributes are a.o. the dolphin, the dove, the swan, the pomegranate and the lime tree. In Roman mythology Venus is the goddess of love and beauty and Cupid is love's messenger...