Pinocchio and the Votive Hand of Sabazios

Many films, literature, and especially fairy tales, are rich in hidden meaning.   Take Pinocchio for example.    The idea of a puppet magically coming to life might seem innocent enough, but even the tale of Pinocchio has a deep esoteric undercurrent.  The first give-away is in the puppet's name, Pinocchio …  literally, "pine-nut boy".

Anytime you run across pine trees, pine-cones or "pine-nuts" in mythology or literature, it's a good bet that creation or resurrection is being inferred.   Enter, Attis.

Cybele was the Great Mother goddess of Troad, the region surrounding the ancient city of Troy which included Anatolia (modern Turkey), a number of islands of the Aegean east of Greece, parts of Thrace and, for our purposes at least, the Caucasus.   Cybele's consort was Attis, who she drove mad with her love.  Attis then castrated himself, died from his wound and was reborn as a pine tree.   Along with the Egyptan myth of Osiris who was torn into pieces by Set and reconstituted by Isis, this story of Attis was the classic resurrection myth prior to the Christ narrative.   The pine tree hence became a symbol of resurrection, and this is why we decorate Christmas trees in December.

Cybele and Attis

The cult of Cybele was one of several religious sects which thrived in the Troad and parts of Greece for well over a thousand years.  In the main these were the Eleusian mysteries, the cults of Dionysis and Cybele and, later, the cult of Sabazios.   Collectively they are called the 'mystery religions' or simply, 'the mysteries', for their strict secrecy … divulging inside knowledge about the cults or their rituals resulted in a quick death for the guilty initiate. 

Thus far on this site I have attempted to trace various Germanic peoples which came to dominate Britain and Europe back to the Black Sea region and, before that the Troad, albeit in a qualified way.   It's important to define here what I mean by "qualified".

The movements of peoples and cultures during the first millenia, coinciding with and following the fall of the Roman Empire, were as world-changing as they are difficult to pin down.   Unlike the succeeding Medieval period in which written records provide a wealth of clues, scholars and historians have had to rely more on archeological finds to untangle the movement of peoples.  Our entire understanding of this period, sketchy as it is, thus depends on how the archeological finds have been interpreted, and herein lies some controversy. 

Peter Heather tackles this subject resolutely in a book, 'Empires and Barbarians', from which I will borrow two metaphors and add one of my own to paint a simple picture – one of how scholars once imagined the migration of cultures in early Europe as well as two alternate views that reflect more sensible interpretations which are gaining traction.   We'll call these metaphors the Bowling Ball model, the Billiard Ball model, and the Snowball model.   In the bowling ball model one group of people move a great distance intact and "bowl over" the indigenous population.  This is the old, outdated traditional view, and I can't say strongly enough that I don't buy into it … despite the fact that one might get the impression that I do from things I have written.   The problem is, I am looking for the threads which indicate the movement of ideas and/or a ruling core-group from one area to another, yet we are all programmed to think in terms of the old model, of large migrations of entire peoples.

The second model, the "Billiard Ball' model, is undoubtedly closer to representing how cultural movement occured.   The balls at one end of the table don't actually wind up at the other end, but the cultural ideas and traditions (and hence the evidence of movement in the archeological records) get transferred via a sequence of interaction along the table's length.   Yet this model, while useful, doesn't tell the whole story either, something which Duke William of Normandy's conquering of England in 1066 provides a clear example of.

William crossed the channel with a couple thousand loyal followers and killed Harold on the battlefield of Hastings, and then took over England as king.   His followers became the new aristocracy and Norman ways did seep into Anglo-Saxon society from the top, but Norman influence on the indeginous population of the English countryside was limited.   This is the "Snowball" model, though probably not the best example.  In the classic Snowball migration, a small core of charismatic leaders moves from one place to another picking up followers along the way, ultimately overwhelming and ruling the indigenous people where they wind up.

I'm guessing that, in the case of the migration of Germanic "conquering culture" from the Black Sea to interior Europe, both the billiard ball and snowball models are valid, i.e. culture transference through interaction between peoples along a "migration route" with a leadership core actually making its way, albeit over generations, from one local to another, is the best guess as to what really happened.  Why do I hold that view?   Because we have legends and pseudo-historical accounts of the Frankish and Viking ruling elite being descended from long lines of kings tracing back to the Black Sea and ultimately Troad.

Why do we care?

Two reasons … because there are clues (already addressed in other articles here) which point to Egyptian or Canaanite (and/or Minoan) origins for the proto-Trojans who, apparently, united the people of Troy and the surrounding region into a large society (and while I'm in parentheses, let's not forget Sumer …  I suspect there was a lot of cross-polinization between those four cultural centers) and, two, these proto-Trojans apparently brought along with them to the Greco/Trojan theater esoteric traditions which manifested in what are termed the "mysteries", or "mystery religions" … secretive cults dedicated to the worship of the Great Mother and other dieties.

Different sources give varying accounts of from where the cultural and religious traditions associated with certain tribes of the Greco/Trojan theater arrived … but these sects, unique for their secrecy and fanatical rituals, almost certainly didn't didn't appear in the Troad spontaneously.  They were imported, probably from the same place that the ancestors of the Trojan kings came from.  Whether that was Egypt or Phoenicia or where is difficult to say but the migration almost certainly passed through Crete.

Mt. Ida, Crete

The Greek myths tell us this.   Also, parts of western Anatolia, notably an area south of Troy which was occupied by the Milesians (some of whom invaded Scotland), are replete in archeological clues pointing to immigration from Crete, and finally, two mountains sacred to the Great Mother, one in western Anatolia and one on Crete, carry the same name, Mt. Ida. 

The Great Mother to whom Mt. Ida near Troy in Anatolia was sacred was Cybele, lover of Attis.  The goddess to whom the Cretian Mt. Ida was sacred was Rhea, and in Greek myth it was on Crete that Rhea gave birth to Zeus.   Zeus' brothers and sisters before him had all been eaten by their father, Chronus (in Rome, Saturn), and Rhea fools her husband by presenting him with a rock wrapped in clothes while hiding the infant Zeus in a cave.    Zeus is then protected by soldiers, the Corybantes, who bang on their shields to hide the cries of the infant Zeus from his child-eating father.

Corybantes protecting Zeus (Rhea seated at left)

If you look up Corybantes you will find that they were a Phrygian tribe, also sometimes pegged to the Caucasus shores of the Black Sea, who worshipped Cybele.   They are sometimes even credited with bringing Mother Goddess worship to the Anatolian penninsula and are closely associated with, or confused with, the Dactyls, the Kouretes, and/or the Kabeiroi.   Since I don't wish on the reader the same torture I went through trying to sort all this out, I'll give my best guess as to what all these names denote.    The Corybantes, Kouretes and Dactyls all appear to have been closely related peoples, all who worshipped the Great Mother (Cybele in the case of the Corybantes and the Dactyls, Rhea in the case of the Kouretes) but who settled in different locals along a migration route eastward from Crete to the Caucasus.  Those who remained on Crete are known as the Kouretes, the Dactyls refer to another group which settled near Mt. Ida in western Anatolia, and the rest who made their way to Phrygia and as far as the Caucasus are known as the Corybantes.   All are sometimes referred to also as the Kabeiroi, but this term is more correctly used to describe the pantheon of dieties these peoples worshipped or, specifically the pantheon of a minor related cult centered on the Aegean islands of Lemnos and Samothrace loyal to Hephaestus (Roman: Vulcan).  The individual gods and goddesses of the pantheons of these Great Mother worshippers (apart from Cybele's consort Attis) are completely unknown due to the intense secrecy of the cults.

That's the best I can do to alleviate some confusion, given the breadth of variance between different sources.  (Anyway, anyone is welcome to torture themselves, do their own research and see how my summary holds up 🙂 )

Despite the secretive nature of the cults, we have a pretty good idea of what their rituals entailed.  Sorry to put it bluntly, but these people where whacked out of their minds.

They allegedly engaged in wild, drunken orgies, and this is bolstered by the fact that Dionysis, who not only had his own cult but was closely associated with the other dieties worshipped in Troad, was the god of wine and ritual madness.  These rituals sometimes climaxed in ritual sacrifice and, in the case of the cult of Cybele, self-castration by ititiate priests in homage to Attis.   The rituals were accompanied by the noisy, raucous banging of cymbals, drums and other percussive instruments, hence the image of the Corybantes banging their shields in the myth of Zeus' infancy. 

We are very interested in these cults, particularly the cults of Cybele, Dionysis and later Sabazios which flourished in Troad.  Not just because the ancestral roots of the leaders of those tribes we know in hindsight as the Franks, Saxons and Vikings appear to lie in the elite of Troad among whom these "mystery cults" were popular, the secretive architecture of the mysteries themselves has survived to this day in Freemasonry and secretive organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations.

G. Edward Griffin has spoken and written about this "architecture" which he describes as "rings within rings".   I'm not sure if Griffin coined the term or not, but you can read all about it in his 2004 piece 'Secret Organizations and Hidden Agendas:

(Broken link removed.)

In ancient Anatolia, one interested in membership in one of the religious cults, if they were lucky enough and deemed worthy, were invited to join.  With initiation came access to some priveleged knowlege, but not all.   Only as one moved upward through the ranks of the cult was more knowledge (and power) forthcoming.  By each upward elevation in rank the initiate was accepted into smaller and more elite "inner circles", hence "rings within rings".   G. Edward Griffin, in the article linked above, explains how this "classic conspiratorial model" was adopted by diamond mogul Cecel Rhodes when he (with the help of Lord Alfred Milner and other collectivists) created his Round Table Groups at the turn of the 20th century.

Rhodes, allegedly a Freemason, had been impressed by the effectiveness of the rings within rings model employed by the Jesuits.  (Sorry, I don't see the connection either.)  He saw the genius of the 'rings within rings' structure and copied it when he started his own secret societies.   From W.T.Stead (quoted from Griffin):

"Mr. Rhodes was more than the founder of a dynasty. He aspired to be the
creator of one of those vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations which, like the Society of Jesus, have played so large a part in the history of the world. To be more strictly accurate, he wished to found an Order as the instrument of the will of the Dynasty…"

Rhodes' "inner circle" was dubbed the 'Society of the Elect', and the same model was followed by other organizations established by the business and banking elite of the 20th century, groups like the Anglo-American Pilgrims Society, the US-based Council on Foreign Relations in New York and its British sister the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London (now called Chatham House), and later the more international-oriented Le Cercle,  to name a few.

I won't go so far as to say that the architectural structure of a large number of conspiritorial organizations set up by the world's elite over the past century should be traced to the mysteries of Troad and Greece, if only for the fact that they weren't the first.  These cults in turn have their own predecesors, the 'Mystery Schools' of ancient Egypt and Babylon, which will be touched on in my next article, 'Pan's Labyrinth'.    There is however, undeniably, a thread which can be seen running from the mystery cults to the secret societies of Medieval Europe to the secretive organizations which steer the governments of today toward the collective and stated goal of their leading members … that being, one-world-government (with them (TM) in charge). 

Logo of the Council on Foreign Relations

Arguably the most powerful of these organizations is the Council on Foreign Relations, whose logo features a naked man on a white horse. The few whose writing I have stumbled onto interested in the identity of this horseman invariably assume or claim that he is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apolcalypse … an interesting theory, but I think they are all wrong.   I think, in fact I am sure, that the horseman of the logo of the CFR is in fact Sabazios.

Sabazios was the diety of one of the mysteries of Troad, a later cult which was in fact a hybrid of two others loyal to, respectively, the Anatolian goddess Cybele (Cybele=Saba) and the Greek god Zeus (Zios=Zeus).    For those interested, John, author of 'Tracking Ladon Gog', has written a whole chapter dealing with Sabazios, the cult's roots, and deeper connections between the terms Saba, Sheba and Cybele (Kybele)  …

http://www.tribwatch.com/sheba.htm

The Thracian/Anatolian horseman Sabazios was apparently the model for St. George the dragon-slayer, and the smoking gun that the figure gracing the CFR logo is in fact this same Sabazios is the hand position at the end of his outstretched right arm.  The thumb and first two fingers of this hand are extended while the 4th and 5th fingers are closed.  

Votive Hand of Sabazios

This same hand position can be found in the 'Votive Hand of Sabazios', a religious artifact of which large numbers of bronze or copper examples have been dug up at Turkish archeological sites.  The fingers of these votive hands are decorated with various religiously significant symbols,  most notably the pine-cone which invariably is attached to the tip of the thumb.

The pine tree, as I mentioned, is the symbol of resurrection/creation as reflected in Attis, the consort of Cybele, being reborn as a pine tree.   Additionally, the pine cone itself has its own special meaning.  I will focus on this in my next article 'Pan's Labyrinth and so I don't want to spoil the fun … so, uhhhm, let's just say that the pine-cone represents … the "third eye".   You know, that all-seeing eye atop the unfinished pyramid we carry around on the backs of our dollar bills.   😀

As for Pinocchio, i.e. the correllation between his "pine-nut" name, the puppet's magical animation and the myth of Attis and his resurrection, I think I've pretty much covered the bases … but there's more.  The woodcarver's name, Geppetto.

Are there any figures, in ancient mythology or in the bible, possibly patriarchal or having to do with the birth of mankind, who the name 'Geppetto' might evoke?

How about Iapetus, the Titan father of Prometheus who, in turn, created mankind from clay and later stole fire from Zeus and gave it to man?  Or Japheth, son of Noah and (as per the bible) patriarch of all the peoples of Europe and Asia?

Geppetto, Iapetus and Japheth all three are in fact essentially the same name in different languages.  Anytime you have a Hebrew 'J' and want an equivalent name in Greek you always swap the J for an 'I'.   Mt. Ida, the name of the two mountains sacred to the Great Mother on Crete and in western Anatolia, would be, if rendered in Hebrew (remembering that in ancient Hebrew vowels were not written … drum roll … ) Mt. Judah.  This curious artifact is, I am convinced, the result of a common Egyptian (and/or Canaanite) heritage for both the ancestors of the Israelites and those settlers of Troad and Greece who I would imagine brought the mystery cults we've been talking about with them to the Aegean.

There is more evidence pointing to common ancestry between the Israelites and migrants to Troad and parts of Greece, some of it spurious, some of it very convincing (and some of it spattered in other posts here).   What this tells me is that it is no coincidence that two important patriarchal figures in the Greek and Hebrew cultures bear the similar names Iapetus and Japheth.  Just to be thorough, Japheth was the brother of Shem and Ham, son of Noah whose progeny, apocryphically, biblically, populated all of Europe and Asia.  His sons were Gomer, Tiras, Javan, Meshech, Tubal, Madai and Magog. These descendents of Japheth, biblically, initially fanned out into Anatolia, Thrace, the Caucasus and Greece, the same area we've been talking about. I discuss Magog a bit in a post here.

Iapetus is a different sort of patriarch.   He was a Titan, and it was his son, Prometheus, who created mankind out of clay and additionally stole fire from Zeus and gave it to man.    It shouldn't be ignored here that the Rockefellers seem to be partial to Prometheus.  It is the fire of Prometheus (the same "fire" carried by atheletes from Olympic venue to Olympic venue every four years by the way) which is featured on the original Standard Oil logo, and the skating rink at Rockefeller Center in New York is guarded by a statue of Prometheus. 

Prometheus at Rockefeller Center

So, we have Japheth being the father of the peoples of Europe and Asia (including obstensibly the Greeks, tribes of Troad and the Black Sea as well as the Hunnic tribes), Iapetus, the father of Prometheus who in turn is, as per the Greek myths, the father of man, and Geppetto, the father of a wooden boy brought to life.   One made out of pine, nonetheless.

If that's all a coincidence I'd be very surprised.

Addendum:

As much as I'd like to give the credit for penning the fairy tale of Pinocchio to Walt Disney, whose elitist occult reputation precedes him and who I have found, like so many other American tycoons, movers and shakers over the years, descended from a Norman ancestor who fought on the battlefield of Hastings with William the Conqueror,  I can't.   I'll credit Disney for picking out the fable and making it famous, but the original story of Pinnocchio was in fact penned in the late 19th century by Carlo Lorenzini, pen name Carlo Calloti, an Italian.

There have been plenty of "dragons" in Italy though.   Migrants from Troad tended to wind up in the north or south of the boot, as opposed to Rome in the middle.  Tuscany, from where Lorenzini hailed, is one such local, as was Venice, a merchant town named for the Veneti.  Lazio along the west side of the boot derives from 'Laz', the Byzantine name for the Black Sea shores of the Caucasus where the Corybantes lived.  Abruzzo is allegedly from where the Brusse/Bruce clan originally hail, and Genoa flew the "Templar" red cross on their flag before even the Templars did.   Oh, and, one Italian banker, the governor of Banca d'Italia, director at the Bank for International Settlements, former VP at Goldman Sachs International and former Executive Director of the World Bank and, finally, the expected successor in 2011 to the post of President of the European Central Bank , is a guy named … Mario Draghi. 

Draghi Coat of Arms