Top image: Double headed androgynous Herm statue, Athens.

In Plato’s Symposium (189–190 AD), Aristophanes displays knowledge of an ancient myth of the androgyne, according to which our original nature was by no means the same as it is now.

When the androgyne was split into two halves, the distinct male and female sexes were created. Plato is well known for his detailed description of Atlantis in the Timaeus and the Critias and the great flood that destroyed it but is lesser known for his knowledge of ancient androgynous beings. Alfred North Whitehead famously said, “Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato”.  Do we accept this reality but ignore him when he talks of subjects that are strange to science?

Plato and Aristotle on School of Athens, fresco, Raphael 1509-1511

Philo of Alexandria (the first century AD) took up Plato’s dualistic conception of the creation as well. Add Berossus, the Midrash, the Gnostics and a host of other sources including previously mentioned ones to the long list who also have. Joannes Richter in his book The Sky God Dyaeus makes the remarkable claim that a common global religion which worshipped an androgynous deity existed in deep antiquity. He states, “it is hard to believe that people have already been devoted to a singular androgynous deity 20,000 years ago but the paleolithic sculptures are quite explicit. Many multi-headed sculptures have been found and one of the oldest identifiable sculptures, made of ivory of mammoth and found at Gargarion, Ukraine is claimed to be 22,000 years old.” (5)

22,000-year-old double headed Androgynous sculpture Gargarion, Ukraine.

Some of the vast amount of androgynous deities found in cultures around the world are Adam Kadmon (Jewish), Agdistis / Agditis (Phrygian, Near Eastern), Agni (Hindu), Angamunggi (Australian Aborigine), Ardhanari / Ardhanarishvara (Hindu), Armaiti (Iranian), Asgaya Gigagei (Cherokee), Aten (Egyptian), Awonawilona (Zuni), Da (Dahomey), Deva (Indonesian), Eros (Greek), Fro Ing / Ingwaz (Norse), Galaturra / Kurgarra (Sumeria), Gran' Silibo / Silibo-Gweto (Vodoun), Gwydion (Celtic), Inari (Shintoism), In P'en (Guatemalan), Kahukura (New Zealand Maori), Lan Zai Gui (Taoist), Labarindja (Australian Aboriginal), Mahatala–Jata (Borneo), Malimeihevao (Polynesian), Mwari (Zimbadwe, Rhodesian), Nenechen (Chilean), Nous (Gnosticism), Wiracocha / Viracocha (Inka).

Plato’s original androgynous human. Androgyne, detail on ancient Greek amphora.

 Are we supposed to accept this is all a vast coincidence, that all these unconnected cultures, sometimes on remotely isolated islands, conjured up the same traditions of ancient androgynous deities the way they did with traditions of a lost continent, a great flood, giants, little people and six fingers and toes?

What’s Passed on in the Man-bags?

Another compelling aspect of this mystery is that many of these androgynous creator gods are depicted worldwide carrying strange "man-bags". Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of The Gods, has enlightened us on a possible transfer of technology from survivors of an ancient cataclysm and highlighted that these bringers of the arts and sciences of civilization are often carrying man-bags. Theories abound attempting to explain what they are but what is known is that they are found over a vast geographic area, associated with Androgynous, supernatural flood survivors from a drowned continent. So, who were these beings and where did they come from?

Androgynous Babylonian man-fish deity Oannes carrying the mysterious “man bag”.

Let's look at some of these God-like deities who showed up after the great flood. Oannes was an androgynous Babylonian man-fish deity who carries the man-bag, in fact in ‘The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Series A: Cuneiform Texts’, H. V. Hilprecht makes an eye-opening claim. “This androgynous nature, this ability to beget out of himself, his own ego, this self-existence is inherent in each and every god of the Sumerians. All Sumerian gods are androgynous.” (6)

Androgynous demi-god Quetzalcoatl, offspring of the Androgynous Ometeotl carries man bag at the Olmec site of La Venta 1800 BC.

Across the ocean in Mexico, Quetzalcoatl, the demi-god offspring of the androgynous being Ometeotl is depicted at the Olmec site of La Venta (1800 BC) carrying a man bag.

The legendary Viracocha, another androgynous god is renowned for his post-flood activities in South America. Often depicted as a bearded giant, he arrived from a lost continent in the Atlantic and spread advanced and unprecedented wisdom.  Oddly, he is called “the foam of the sea” just as the legendary Cucullain was in Ireland. Cucullain was claimed to have seven fingers and toes (you don’t have to venture further than Wikipedia to uncover that fact) and arrived from a lost advanced civilization in the middle of the Atlantic. Where both these supernatural beings called foam of the sea because they had advanced metal sea craft that created a turning of the waves and inspired awe in the indigenous peoples? In the wake of these beings, sprang up wonderfully complex civilizations and stonework. In South America, Sumeria and after androgynous Thoth came to Egypt, some of the world's most incredible and sophisticated civilizations soon appeared. The Androgynous Thoth is widely reported to have been from Atlantis in esoteric circles, he was also known as Hermes Trismegistus, Hermaphrodite is Hermes + Aphrodite.

Double headed Herm statue, Athens.

As an added piece of evidence regarding the sophistication of ancient Sumer let us turn to a remarkable recent discovery. As reported in the Guardian August 24 th 2017, (7) an ancient Babylonian tablet has been finally deciphered after 100 years by a team from New South Wales in Sydney. From the article,

"Mathematicians have been arguing for most of a century about the interpretation of the tablet known as Plimpton 322 , ever since the New York publisher George Plimpton bequeathed it to Columbia University in the 1930s as part of a major collection. He bought it from Edgar Banks, a diplomat, antiquities dealer and flamboyant amateur archaeologist said to have inspired the character of Indiana Jones – his feats included climbing Mount Ararat in an unsuccessful attempt to find Noah’s Ark – who had excavated it in southern Iraq in the early 20th century. Mansfield, who has published his research with his colleague Norman Wildberger  in the journal Historia Mathematica , says that while mathematicians understood for decades that the tablet demonstrates that the theorem long predated Pythagoras, there had been no agreement about the intended use of the tablet. “The huge mystery, until now, was its purpose – why the ancient scribes carried out the complex task of generating and sorting the numbers on the tablet. Our research reveals that Plimpton 322 describes the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles. It is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius.”

Plympton 322 Babylonian tablet

“The tablet not only contains the world’s oldest trigonometric table; it is also the only completely accurate trigonometric table, because of the very different Babylonian approach to arithmetic and geometry. This means it has great relevance for our modern world. Babylonian mathematics may have been out of fashion for more than 3,000 years, but it has possible practical applications in surveying, computer graphics and education. This is a rare example of the ancient world teaching us something new.”

All this begs the question, did the androgynous, man bag carrying Oannes pass along this sophisticated information in ancient times? It also adds fuel to the question of why Sumerians used a base 12 system rather than a base 10 system. Could this ancient conundrum be easily explained by the fact that these bringers of civilization had six fingers instead of five as has been previously suggested? Which brings us to another remarkably specific trait associated with the supernatural ancient ones, six fingers and toes. The biblical quote regarding the Giant of Gath has been previously given in reference to the Ain Ghazal statues but there is much more to this story.

Carved Giant six-toed footprint, Island of Tarawa.

The world is littered with ancient statues, carvings and petroglyphs with six fingers and toes. From isolated pacific Islands to numerous US states to countries beyond mention worldwide. Even Edgar Cayce reports on a high being with six fingers named Muzuen who traveled to the Gobi Desert from the lost pacific continent of Lemuria in 9,026 BC. (8)

Utah, six fingered and toed Petroglyph.

 The esoteric belief being that six fingers and toes was a trait attributed to ancient supernatural androgynous deities and their offspring, a trait that was eventually abandoned for the five-fingered homo sapiens of today. Maybe this is the reason the Biblical Adam is portrayed with six fingers in Jan Van Scorel’s painting from 1540.

Six-toed rock carving Illinois.

  Cayce’s description of Muzuen, reading 877-10, describes him as being six feet tall, blue eyed, hair dark gold, hands six-fingered, immediately brings to mind the recently discovered Caucasoid Tarim Basin Mummies found in China, many of which have red and blond hair, blue eyes and are between six feet and six feet six inches tall.

Six fingered Adam, Jan Van Scorel, 1540. Detail of Adam’s left hand

Androgynous creator gods, strange beings with man bags, outrageous stone work, strikingly similar iconography and the most stunning part is that all the sources I have listed from Edgar Cayce to the Rosicrucian’s and Plato all report this same reality. Is this not worth investigating? I say of course it is and I am not alone, many other researchers have been on the trail of these mysteries for decades and now it looks like these ideas are beginning to get a closer look.

This alternative view of history makes sense of all the strange and mythological traditions of the world, where our current scientific paradigm addresses none of it and leaves us in the dark with the misperception that our ancestors were superstitious, illogical and insane. Besides the tragedies of the burning of the Library of Alexandria and the Mayan Codices being destroyed, it looks like modern science has thrown out thousands of years of legitimate evidence in the form of myth, legend, religious documents, oral traditions and secret society literature.  The more I dig, the more I lean toward the ancient world described by Edgar Cayce and others as being the more probable reality.  I certainly don't believe there to be any truth to the idea of academic conspiracies but human nature and the draconian effect of entrenched orientations around pre-existing paradigms make it an uphill battle for new ideas to take root.

Hopefully, this information will strike the reader as profoundly as it has me and you will be open to entertain seemingly heretical notions about the past. Please join me at the Edgar Cayce Ancient Mysteries Conference on October 6th in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the Origins conference on November 4th in London or at the Awake and Empowered Expo in Detroit on November 10-12 as I discuss the Lost World of Edgar Cayce.