5 - The Watchers

We must now move on to one of the earliest of all origins of secret societies from which is derived
much of the terminology and symbolism still used today by the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, and many
others - the Watchers - otherwise known as the “sons of God” and in Hebrew as Eyrim (Irim).
 
In doing so we shall be taking a look at the very origins of the first secret societies and the influences of
astrotheology and serpent worship upon them.

Zecharia Sitchin in The Stairway to Heaven, states:

The Akkadians called their predecessors Shumerians, and spoke of the Land of Shumer. It was in fact
the biblical Land of Shin’ar. It was the land whose name - Shumer - literally meant the Land of the
Watchers. It was indeed the Egyptian Ta Neter - Land of the Watchers, the land from which gods had
come to Egypt.
So, Sumeria could mean “Land of the Watchers,” and it is from this land that the Elohim or Shining
Ones, who governed the Watchers, also came.
 
In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes tells us
something interesting about these governing gods:
Throughout Mesopotamia, from the earliest times of Sumer and Akkad, all lands were owned by gods
and men were their slaves.
 
Of this, the cuneiform texts leave no doubt whatever. Each city-state had its principal god, and the king
was described in the very earliest written documents that we have as “the tenant farmer of the god.”
Let’s just take a look at these Elohim for a moment to find out who these “gods” were that supposedly
enslaved men and were in charge of the Watchers.
 

Elohim
This is the term used often in the Old Testament (and other texts outside of it, as in the Muslim Allah =
Elah) for the Lord; an incorrect usage, as the term is plural and means “Shining Ones.”

We can see this plurality in the text from Genesis 1:26:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
And again in Genesis 6:2:
“The sons of god saw the daughters of men that they were fair.”
This term “sons of god” is literally “sons of gods” and comes from ben ha-elohim, “sons of the shining
ones.”
 the Sumerian EL means simply bright or shining
 the Old Irish Aillil means shining
 Old Cornish EL means shining
 Elf means shining - hence Elves as tall/mysterious angelic beings
 Inca Illa is bright or to shine
 Babylonian Ellu is to shine,
...to name just a few that have sprung up worldwide from the same Sumerian source.

Baal, the deity often spoken of as the “Lord” in the Bible, is also seen as a shining one in the Old
Testament and is called the Owner. At that time there were many “Owners” or shining ones; in fact,
there was one for each village.
To these Hebrews the Elohim were nature divinities from ancient Sumerian times. According to
General Albert Pike, the famous Masonic historian, in Morals and Dogma, the Elohim were the “host of
heaven,” ascending and descending to pass messages to and from god or leader (Yahweh). The host
of heaven were of course the stars in the night sky humanized.

Some of the shining ones were termed Watchers and are akin to the angels of the
Lord. Yahweh Elohim means simply “leader of the shining ones.”

So now we have these plural Elohim or shining ones as gods, being above even the kings, and
supplying Watchers - to watch over man, and as Sitchin pointed out, they were also in Egypt.

This Ta Neter that Sitchin mentions resembles the Egyptian Ntr, a name for Ptah and other gods,
which means guardian or watcher. Ta Neter is also the name for the Red Sea straits, which connected
Mesopotamia and Egypt and is known as the place of the gods.
 
The Neter or Ntr word means and is derived from the concept of neutrality and is simply the place
between, the path between the pillars or the place between awake and asleep that we spoke of earlier
in this chapter.

These Watchers were also known as Urshu and were classed as being less divine than the gods,
although in this instance, as Graham Hancock points out in Fingerprint of the Gods, the Urshu speak of
the Neteru (Ntr) as if it were they who were the gods and the Urshu the Watchers. Whatever the truth
in this matter, it is no wonder that confusion has arisen over so many thousands of years.
 
The fact remains though, that the ancients spoke of a time when there were gods or shining ones who
ruled up and down Sumeria and Egypt and who employed watchers over the ordinary folk. In the same
way a Pharaoh of Egypt was a god-on-Earth, so too priests of the Elohim (stars) were stars-on-Earth.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead calls these Watchers:

Anubis and Horus in the form of Horus the sightless. Others, however, say that they are the Tchatcha,
who bring to nought the operations of their knives; and others say that they are the chiefs of the Sheniu
chamber.
So, even in ancient Egypt, by the time of the writing of the Book of the Dead, there was confusion.
 
According Sitchin in The Wars of Gods and Men:
They had come to Egypt, the Egyptians wrote, from Ta-Ur, the “Far/Foreign Land,” whose name Ur
meant “oldest” but could also have been the actual place name - a place well known from
Mesopotamian and biblical records: the ancient city of Ur.
We should note at this point that this Ur is the same place that the father of the world’s three great
religions, Abraham, is also said to have trained.

According to The Legend of Votan (note similarity with the Nordic Wotan who is said to have come
from across the sea) from Mesoamerica, this Votan was the serpent who was a descendent of the race
of Can and was called a guardian or watcher, amazingly similar to Canaan, as such people as Zelia
Nuttal in Papers of the Peabody Museum has suggested.

These Canaanites are implicated in many places revolving around the Shining Ones and the original
serpent priests - another name for the Shining Ones. 1
 
The serpent was known in the language of Canaan variously as Aub, Ab; Oub, Ob; Oph, Op; Eph, Ev.
In the Mayan language “Can” also means serpent, as in Cuculcan the bird serpent, and just as in the
ancient Sumerian Acan and the Scottish Can for serpent (which is where we get the word “canny” like
the wise snake).
 
Vulcan (sounding like Votan and Wotan), the Roman god of fire, comes from the Babylonian Can for
serpent and Vul for fire, showing an etymological link across thousands of miles and oceans and
meaning, therefore, that Vulcan is the shining serpent.
 
Indeed even the very center of the Christian world, the Vatican, comes from the words “vatis” for
prophet and “can” for serpent, making the Vatican a place of serpent prophecy.

The Hebrews termed these Watchers as nun resh’ayin, meaning “those who watch.” In the Greek this
is translated as gigantes or giants, a race that even the 907 B.C. writer Hesiod featured as being
monstrous (due to their serpentine aspect no doubt). Now we can understand the role of the giants 2
seen across the world of folklore as the presence of the Watchers.

Enoch in 1 Enoch 20:1-8 even gives us the names of these Watchers, and I noted that they were all
subtitled Shining Ones with the ending:
And these are the names of the holy angels who watch. Uriel, one of the holy angels, who is over the
world and over Tartarus. Raphael, one of the holy angels, who is over the spirits of men.
 
Raguel, one of the holy angels who takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries. Michael, one of
the holy angels, to wit, he that is set over the best part of mankind and over chaos.
 
Saraqael, one of the holy angels, who is set over the spirits, who sin in spirit. Gabriel, one of the holy
angels, who is over Paradise and the serpents and the Cherubim. Remiel, one of the holy angels,
whom God set over those who rise.
Note that Gabriel, the messenger who told of the birth of Jesus and who passed on wisdom to
Mohammed, is in charge of the serpents. Remiel is over those who rise - those seeking enlightenment.

In the Testament of Amram (manuscript B) we have a remarkable insight into the aspect of these

shining Watchers:
I asked them, “Who are you, that you are thus empowered over me?” They answered me, “We have
been empowered and rule over all mankind.” They said to me, “Which of us do you choose to rule
you?” I raised my eyes and looked. One of them was terrifying in his appearance, like a serpent, his
cloak many colored yet very dark.
 
And I looked again, and in his appearance, his visage like a viper, and wearing exceedingly, and all his
eyes….I replied to him, “This Watcher, so is he?” He answered me, “This Watcher….and his three
names are Belial and Prince of darkness and King of Evil.”
The Mosaic Book of Jubilees was originally called the Apocalypse of Moses as it was supposedly
written by Moses while on Mount Sinai and dictated by a Watcher or angel.
 
This book was intended as a history of the days of old and reveals the purpose of the Watchers:

For in his days the angels of the Lord [Elohim - Shining Ones] descended upon the earth [came down
from their mountain stronghold] - those who are named Watchers - that they should instruct the
children of men, that they should do judgment and uprightness upon the earth.

These Watchers, according to the Book of Jubilees, are the sons of god spoken of in Genesis, sent
from their heavenly abode to instruct men. What seems to have occurred is that they fell from grace by
mating with the daughters of men and were thus outcast - giving us the fallen angels we are familiar
with today.

However, according to A Dictionary of Angels, not all these Watchers descended from the heavenly
abode, and those that did not were termed holy Watchers, residing in the fifth heaven.
 
As Enoch himself had testified against these fallen Watchers he was protected by the ruling Shining
Ones and transported to the Garden of Eden (Eden means plateau and is therefore a specific place):
And I Enoch was blessing the Lord of majesty and the King of the ages, and lo! The Watchers called
me - Enoch the scribe - and said to me:
“Enoch, thou scribe of righteousness, go, declare to the Watchers of the heaven who have left the high
heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women, and have done as the
children of the earth do, and have taken unto themselves wives: Ye have wrought great destruction on
the earth: And ye shall have no peace nor forgiveness of sin: and inasmuch as they delight themselves
in their children, The murder of their beloved ones shall they see, and over the destruction of their
children shall they lament, and shall make supplication unto eternity, but mercy and peace shall ye not
attain.”
(1 Enoch 10:3–8)
According to Andrew Collins in From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race,
the fallen Watchers swear an oath and bind themselves together.
 
The place of this action is called Ardis, the fabled summit of Mount Hermon, which derives from the
Hebrew word for curse (harem). Following these actions of the fallen Watchers, the Shining Ones
called down a great flood upon the Earth to destroy the offspring, and Noah is warned to build a great
ship to escape the impending doom.
 
There was obviously some great battle between the dissenters and the Shining Ones and the loyal
Watchers, which allowed Michael, Gabriel, and the others to slay the remaining fallen Watchers. The
flood is the symbolic idea of the later cleansing of the land (and mind) and the restarting of the human
race (or self) on track with the Shining Ones’ ideals - a probable merging of a folk memory of some
great catastrophe and the actual event.
 
There were other catastrophes written up as being the judgment of the remaining Watchers, which
must simply be folk memories of actual catastrophes that occurred and were blamed upon the
transgressions of the fallen Watchers.
 
Indeed, even the spirits of these fallen Watchers are blamed for future evils, as Enoch points out:
And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the
earth, and cause trouble: they take no food, but nevertheless hunger and thirst, and cause offenses.
And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have
proceeded them.
(1 Enoch 12)