FROM GODDESS TO KING

A History of Ancient Europe from the

OERA LINDA BOOK

By Anthony Radford

CHAPTER 4

FRYA AND THE LAND THAT WAS HOME

The first translation of the first letter into modern Frisian.

Theopening lines of the Oera Linda Book are by Hiddo Over de Linda. He was the last to copy it in the year 1256 AD. His only additional contribution is this opening letter in which he entreats his descendants to keep the book safe so that it may never be lost. Very significantly, he dates all the older times by referring them to the number of years since the submergence of Atland, the Old Land or the original home of these pre-Christian Europeans. The date is given as 3449 less 1256 or 2193 BC and marks the beginning of the continental post submergence calendar that is referred to several times in the Oera Linda Book. Here we have the tone of the Book set in the first letter; protection from power sources that cannot tolerate free expression and the gift of exciting historical facts. That original date is even confirmed again from a different source as we read on.

The actual writings from the Book are listed in type with serifs after the authors commentary. The translation is modern but retains much of the original style that these ancient narrators, members of a Frisian family, used when compiling a collection of history and sociology near the end of a very long and proud age.

The book begins:

Okke My Son

You must preserve these books with body and soul. They contain the history of all our people, as well as of our forefathers. Last year I saved them from the flood, as well as you and your mother; but they got wet and therefore began to perish. In order not to lose them, I copied them on foreign paper.

In case you inherit them, you must copy them likewise, and your children must do so too, so that they never may be lost.

Written at Liudwert, in the three thousand four hundred and forty-ninth year after Atland was submerged - that is according to the Christian reckoning, the year 1256.

Hiddo, surnamed Over de Linda - Watch.

The second letter is by Liko Over de Linda who added it to the Book that he probably copied from an older unknown edition in the year 803 AD. Hiddo Over De Linda in his edition reproduced it, the work that is most likely to be the actual Oera Linda Book which was introduced to the modern world in 1871.

Liko makes his earlier entreaty to keep the book out of the hands of the Christian monks who "Conspire with foreign kings to destroy all that we derive from our forefathers."

Beloved successors, for the sake of our dear forefathers, and of our dear liberty, I entreat you a thousand times never let the eye of a monk look on these writings. They are very insinuating, but they destroy in an underhand manner all that relates to us Frisians. In order to gain rich benefices, they conspire with foreign kings, who know that we are their greatest enemies, because we dare to speak to their people of liberty, rights and duties of princes. Therefore they seek to destroy all that we derive from our forefathers, and all that is left of our customs.

Ah, my beloved ones! I have visited their courts! If Wr-Alda permits it, and we do not show ourselves strong to resist, they will altogether exterminate us.

Liko, Surnamed Over de Linda.

Written at Liudwert,

Anno Domini 803.

The next passage reproduced here does not occur in this sequence in the Oera Linda Book as it was apparently added about 530 BC by Apollonia, the daughter of Adela. Adela was an important defender of the Free Land but refused to become the new Earth Mother because she wanted to marry and have a family. Apollonia became a Burgtmaid of Liudgaard and added the passage because it was missing from the collection at that time. It was taken from a much older inscription on the outside wall of the tower of the Citadel of Liudgaard. An important town of the time near the Rhine, or where that river may have been in ancient times as the rivers and islands of modern Holland are very different from the geography of thousands of years ago.

Creation is ascribed to Wr-Alda who is essentially their name for God. Neither male nor female, Wr-Alda is the formless concept of a monotheistic belief older than the biblical references to the originally plural translation of the word "Elohim". However recent research shows that even the ancient Sumerians had a concept of a singular creative force or entity behind their many references to different gods. Like the monotheistic teachings of the Pharaoh Akhenaton of Egypt in the fourteenth century BC, the symbolism of the sun to represent one god was also used by these people. This could be the oldest written record of the concept of monotheism.

They show a good working definition of "wickedness", not the popular dualistic interpretation that implies something morally bad or evil but one that is related to "heaviness, carelessness and stupidity" or the Hindu term "Tamas" and ignorance. Such dichotomies for example, wicked-saintly, or good-evil, et cetera may contribute to a cultures inability to respond to change. If transgressors are branded by society, then what is the point in teaching them new values? All this hundreds of years before the Vedas were written was lost because Europe did not develop or was unable to maintain a mystic tradition like India. Even the word mystic attests to a need for protection from censure in the East as well as the West.

In the oldest passages, Wr-Alda is referred to in the feminine. Later sections refer to the Oldest One in the masculine. Apparently they had the same lack of general pronouns as we do today. It is disrespectful to refer to God as "It" and "They" is very confusing. This gender change is an example how the Matriarchal Age changed to the patriarchal. The early Christian editors of the Bible completed it in the first three centuries AD.

The old legend which is written on the outside wall of the city tower is not written in The Book of Adelas Followers. Why this has been neglected I do not know; but this book is my own, so I will put it out of regard to my relations.

The Oldest Doctrine:

Hail to all the well-intentioned children of Frya! Through them the earth shall become holy. Learn and announce to the people Wr-Alda is the ancient of ancients, for he created all things. Wr-Alda is all in all, for he is eternal and everlasting. Wr-Alda is omnipresent but invisible, and therefore is called a spirit. All that we can see of him are the created beings who come to life through him and go again, because from Wr-Alda all things proceed and return to him. Wr-Alda is the beginning and the end. Wr-Alda is the only almighty being, because from him all other strength comes, and returns to him. Therefore he alone is the creator, and nothing exists without him. Wr-Alda established eternal principles, upon which the laws of creation were founded and no good laws could stand on any other foundation. But although everything is derived from Wr-Alda, the wickedness of men does not come from him. Wickedness comes from heaviness, carelessness, and stupidity; therefore they may well be injurious to men, but never to Wr-Alda. Wr-Alda is wisdom, and the laws that he has made are the books from which we learn, nor is any wisdom to be found or gathered but in them. Men may see a great deal, but Wr-Alda sees everything. Men can learn a great deal, but Wr-Alda knows everything. Men can discover much, but to Wr-Alda everything is open. Mankind are male and female, but Wr-Alda created both. Mankind love and hate, but Wr-Alda alone is just. Therefore Wr-Alda is good, and there is no good without him. In the progress of time all creation alters and changes, but goodness alone is unalterable; and since Wr-Alda is good, he cannot change. As he endures, he alone exists; everything else is show.

All peoples have their myth of the original creation of mankind. In most of Europe today, the Biblical book of Genesis that has been borrowed from the Hebrew, Akkadian and Sumerian myths serves this purpose. Every child knows about Adam and Eve. Much of Asia shares a common but different story and in more remote islands and tribes, these stories can be very individual and specific for that culture. Here is recorded the early European version of creation in which Irtha or Mother Earth created the mothers of mankind twelve years after the earth was created by God. It is also very specific and written from the point of view of the "Children of Frya" or the Friends of Europe. It is recorded as fact just as is the story of Genesis.

Most importantly this "Oldest Doctrine" shows the basis of the entire attitude of these people. They were taught as children to never trust the yellow invaders of the country, Findas people. They were taught to respect the `Tex that was engraved in stone on the first citadel at Texland. From this word we have our modern words "text and textbook." They were introduced to a moral code and a political one for the preservation of their independence. They were reminded of the earliest beginnings that were drastically interrupted by a natural disaster but they were not left alone by their Mother Goddess when at that time she "ascended to heaven," from Texland.

This is our earliest history:

Wr-Alda, who alone is eternal and good, made the beginning. Then commenced time. Time wrought all things, even the earth. The earth bore grass, herbs, and trees, all useful and all noxious animals. All that is good and useful she brought forth by day, and all that is bad and injurious by night.

After the twelfth Julefest she brought forth three maidens:

Lyda out of fierce heat.

Finda out of strong heat.

Frya out of moderate heat.

When the last came into existence, Wr-Alda breathed his spirit upon her in order that men might be bound to him. As soon as they were full grown they took pleasure and delight in the visions of Wr-Alda.

Hatred found its way among them. They each bore twelve sons and twelve daughters - at every Jule-time a couple. Thence come all mankind.

Lyda was black, with hair curled like a lambs; her eyes shone like stars, and shot out glances like those of a bird of prey.

Lyda was acute. She could hear a snake glide, and could smell a fish in the water.

Lyda was strong and nimble. She could bend a large tree, yet when she walked she did not bruise a flowers stalk.

Lyda was violent. Her voice was loud, and when she screamed in anger every creature quailed.

Wonderful Lyda! She had no regard for laws; her actions were governed by her passions. To help the weak she would kill the strong, and when she had done it she would weep by their bodies.

Poor Lyda! She turned gray by her mad behavior, and at last she died heartbroken by the wickedness of her children. Foolish children! They accused each other of their mothers death. They howled and fought like wolves, and while they did this the birds devoured the corpse. Who can refrain from tears at such a recital?

Finda was yellow, and her hair was like the mane of a horse. She could not bend a tree, but where Lyda killed one lion she killed ten.

Finda was seductive. Her voice was sweeter than any birds. Her eyes were alluring and enticing, but whoever looked upon them became her slave.

Finda was unreasonable. She wrote thousands of laws, but she never obeyed one. She despised the frankness of the good, and gave herself up to flatters.

That was her misfortune. Her head was too full, but her heart was too vain. She loved nobody but herself, and she wished that all should love her.

False Finda! Honey-sweet were her words, but those who trusted them found sorrow at hand.

Selfish Finda! She wished to rule everybody, and her sons were like her. They made their sisters serve them, and they slew each other for the mastery.

Treacherous Finda! She died in the bloom of her age, and the mode of her death is unknown.

Hypocritical children! Her corpse was buried under a costly stone, pompous inscriptions were written on it, and loud lamentations were heard at it, but in private not a tear was shed.

Despicable people! The laws that Finda established were written on golden tablets, but the object for which they were made was never attained. The good laws were abolished, and selfishness instituted bad ones in their place. O Finda! Then the earth overflowed with blood, and your children were mown down like grass. Yes Finda! Those were the fruits of your vanity. Look down from your watch-star and weep.

Frya was white like the snow at sunrise, and the blue of her eyes vied with the rainbow.

Beautiful Frya! Like the rays of the sun shone the locks of her hair, which were as fine as spiders webs.

Clever Frya! At the glance of her eye the lion lay down at her feet and the adder withheld his poison.

Pure Frya! Her food was honey, and her beverage was dew gathered from the cups of the flowers.

Sensible Frya! The first lesson that she taught her children was self-control, and the second was the lover of virtue; and when they were grown she taught them the value of liberty; for she said, "Without liberty all other virtues serve to make you slaves, and to disgrace your origin."

Generous Frya! She never allowed metal to be dug from the earth for her own benefit, but when she did it, it was for the general use.

Most happy Frya! Like the starry host in the firmament, her children clustered around her.

Wise Frya! When she had seen her children reach the seventh generation, she summoned them all to Flyland, and there gave them her Tex, saying, "Let this be your guide, and it can never go ill with you."

Exalted Frya! When she had thus spoken the earth shook like the sea of Wr-Alda. The ground of Flyland sunk beneath her feet, the air was dimmed by tears, and when they looked for their mother she was already risen to her watching star; then at length thunder burst from the clouds, and the lightning wrote upon the firmament: "Watch!"

Farseeing Frya! The land from which she had risen was now a stream, and except her Tex all that was in it was overwhelmed.

Obedient children! When they came to themselves again, they made this high mound and built this citadel upon it, and on the walls they wrote the Tex, and that every one should be able to find it they called the land about it Texland. Therefore it shall remain as long as the earth shall be the earth.

We continue with Apollonias additions to the "Book of Adela" from the "Oldest Doctrine" to show what was recorded about their homeland or Atland (Aldland or Old Land) as the sailors referred to it. They remembered it fondly, but it was more than a Garden of Eden because it was the cultural center for a very diverse and ancient people who were spread from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains where the Slavonic and Scythian races were once remembered as Fryas people.

In reading the description of the geography of Atland, it is difficult to place it with any certainty upon a modern map. It does not necessarily show it to be a separate island or subcontinent that descriptions of Atlantis usually conjure up in the mind. It could have been no more than a western extension of present day Europe in the North sea like a huge Helgoland, a North Sea bank or the lost alluvial lands built up at the mouths of the major rivers. If the account is true, then there is no question that the catastrophe referred to was of major, global proportions. The directions of the compass, or more correctly, the directions of the rising and setting of the sun so described, are difficult to correlate to todays geography. It is possible that an imbalance in the masses of the earths crust could suddenly shift whole continents so that the earth looks like it has flipped or shifted its poles. It is impossible that such a huge momentum inherent in the spin of the earth itself could have changed in any recorded time.

Temples have been dated in Egypt and South America to an age probably older than 2193 BC. These edifices show a north-south or even a specific star alignment that is very accurate according to todays positions. The star alignments have to take into account the precession of the earth, a fact that has been used to date them but it makes it all very unlikely that any global shift has occurred in recorded times. A shift of exactly ninety degrees is possible but highly improbable, but it is intriguing as the following description does locate Aldland at ninety degrees to common understanding.

Nevertheless, all cultures have stories of floods and disasters. It would be very interesting if some of these different stories could be specifically dated to 2193 BC. We have to bear in mind that this was not the popular understanding of the Atlantis of Plato or the Flood of Genesis. These events, should they have occurred, would have predated Atland by seven to nine thousand years.

This Stands Inscribed Upon All Citadels:

Before the bad time came our country was the most beautiful in the world. The sun rose higher, and there was seldom frost. The trees and shrubs produced various fruits, which are now lost. In the fields we had not only barley, oats and rye, but wheat which shone like gold, and which could be baked in the suns rays. The years were not counted, for one was as happy as another.

On one side we were bounded by Wr-Aldas Sea, on which no one but us might or could sail; on the other side we were hedged in by the broad German land through which the Finda people dared not come on account of the thick forests and the wild beasts.

Eastward our boundary went to the extremity of the East Sea (Black Sea), and westward to the Mediterranean Sea; so that besides the small rivers we had twelve large rivers given us by Wr-Alda to keep our land moist, and to show our seafaring men the way to His sea.

The banks of these rivers were at one time entirely inhabited by our people as well as the banks of the Rhine from one end to the other. Opposite Denmark and Jutland we had colonies and a burgtmaid. Thence we obtained copper and iron, as well as tar and pitch, and some other necessaries. Opposite to us we had Britain, formerly Westland, with her tin mines. Britain was the land of the exiles, who with the help of their burgtmaid had gone away to save their lives; but in order that they might not come back they were tattooed with a "B" on the forehead, the banished with a red dye, the other criminals with blue.

Moreover, our sailors and merchants had many factories among the distant Cretans and in Lydia (Libya). In Lydia the people are black. As our country was so great and extensive, we had many different names. Those who were settled to the east of Denmark were called Jutten, because often they did nothing else than look for jutten (amber) on the shore. Those who lived in the islands were called Letten, because they lived an isolated life. All those who lived between Denmark and the Sandval, now the Scheldt, were called Stuurlieden, Zeecampers and Angelaren (boatmen, shore-dwellers and fishermen). The Angelaren were men who fished in the sea, and were so named because they used lines and hooks instead of nets. From there to the nearest part of Crete the inhabitants were called Kadhemers, because they never went to sea but remained ashore.

Those who were settled in the higher marches bounded by Germany - were called Saxons, because they were always armed against the wild beasts and the savage Britons. Besides these we had Marsaten, and Woud or Hout Zaten (marsh-dwellers and woodsmen).

From the section called The Book of Adelas Followers, there is the only description of the disaster. It is entitled How the Bad Time Came. It tells of a psychological warning of how people felt before the event that apparently extended over three years. If there were warnings of a physical nature it could have been in the form of subsonic rumblings. It is widely believed that animals can detect some earthquake warning phenomena then so must humans if we could tune into it.

The description of some lands rising while others sank would be consistent with a balanced geological disturbance. The forest fires could have been caused by either lightning strikes or by volcanic eruptions or even both. The purpose of this book is not to speculate with a series of "What if"s or to try to verify the material of the Oera Linda Book. The purpose is simply to present this information in a readable form. We are all curious about these phenomena, especially today when there is much talk of earthquakes, new ages et cetera. Be that as it may, the material is very entertaining, but a serious advocate must consult the original material and relate it to what modern open-minded research can find.

In the remoter regions of the continental nation, the thinning of the forest barriers permitted Findas people to move westwards and settle onto some of the devastated or deserted regions while the Slavonic communities were lost to freedom and gave the word "slave" to our vocabulary. A new era began as the Age of Taurus gave way to the Age of Aries.

How The Bad Time Came:

During the whole summer the sun had been hid behind the clouds, as if unwilling to look upon the earth. There was perpetual calm, and the damp mist hung like a wet sail over the houses and the marshes. The air was heavy and oppressive, and in hearts of men was neither joy nor cheerfulness. In the midst of this stillness the earth began to tremble as if she was dying. The mountains opened to vomit forth fire and flames. Some sank into the bosom of the earth, and in other places mountains rose out of the plain. Aldland, called by the seafaring people Atland, disappeared, and the wild waves rose so high over hill and dale that everything was buried in the sea. Many people were swallowed up by the earth, and others who had escaped the fire perished in the water.

It was not only in Findas land that the earth vomited fire, but also in Germany. Whole forests were burned one after the other, and when the wind blew from that quarter, our land was covered with ashes. Rivers changed their course, and at their mouths new islands were formed of sand and drift.

During three years this continued, but at length it ceased, and forests became visible. Many countries were submerged, and in other places land rose above the sea, and the wood was destroyed throughout half of Germany. Troops of Findas people came and settled in the empty places. Our dispersed people were exterminated or made slaves. Then watchfulness was doubly impressed upon us, and time taught us that union is force.

After the disaster, Frya, the Mother Goddess of Europe leaves her abode at the mouth of the Fly river, and "ascends to heaven," but before disappearing she leaves her Tex with her children and recognizes her Maiden Fasta as her earthly successor. Her Tex was her counsel. It is not so much the basis of the temporal laws that followed but a social and spiritual code. She hints of an afterlife, she acknowledges that Wr-Alda is also the protector of the peoples of Lyda and Finda but strongly cautions her children to protect their freedoms from the other two races with which relations are strictly regulated. Even the law of karma is expressed as being beyond any secular justification. Her Tex has given us the word "Textbook" and after her time Fryasburgt became the capital of Texland where the greatest citadel in all Europe was built. The Tex is given in the Appendix.

A comment is needed at this point on the language and alphabet used to record these laws and events. The Oera Linda Book may have been copied in 1256 AD by Hiddo Over de Linda, but it specifically refers to the wall inscriptions that were themselves copied in the six century BC onto paper or skrivfilt. They in turn refer to wall inscriptions that were recorded as early as 2000 BC. It makes reference to their written language being with little change until the influences at the end of the fourth century BC.

It is generally recognized that writing began in the land of Sumer in hieroglyphic form about six thousand years ago. It may have been much earlier as references to pre-Deluvian texts are made in Sumer and that could make writing at least thirteen thousand years old. Hieroglyphics gave way to cuneiform or wedge marks in soft clay as a more convenient and faster way of recording events and contracts. The cuneiform symbols were like scripted styles of the original hieroglyphics. They were not a new or phonetic code, the symbols represented whole root words, the meaning of which was very dependent on the context. This in turn became Akkadian cuneiform, which represented consonants only, vowels were missing, and then it evolved into other Semitic alphabets used in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent.

The sea-trading nation of Phoenicia is credited with the first phonetic alphabet coming out of the North Semitic one about the eleventh century BC. It has given its name to our alphabet and in turn was supposed to have influenced the Greek alphabet, which through Rome gave our current West European versions. It was an alphabet of twenty-two characters, writing consonants only, from right-to-left and continued to evolve for another thousand years. Does this appear to be the forerunner of what you are now reading? The Greek alphabet has Phoenicians characters but Semitic names and writes from left-to-right. The Oera Linda Book tells a different story. Frya deliberately constructed a phonetic alphabet out of segments of a six-spoked wheel or jule, symbolic for the sun sign, a day or a year. The alphabet consisted of thirty-three characters. (See Plate I). This was taught to Fasta and the tradition of literacy was institutionalized in the citadels with very little changes from twenty-three hundred BC to twelve hundred AD when the book was last copied into Old Frisian.

Isidore of Seville wrote in the early seventh century that the alphabet was invented by the Goddess herself but locates her in Greece. He attributes the ordinary Greek alphabet to the Phoenicians. Soon after the "standing" invention, a freehand alphabet was developed called "running" which has given us the runic characters although within the next two thousand years that form became straightened out again because of its use in carvings where curves are harder to accomplish. Very early on, decimal numbers were added by a sea-king named Godfried; they were no doubt a commercial necessity. There are many references to Phoenician traders, both their coming to the Atlantic nations and the Rhine fleets going to the Mediterranean so they did interact, trade and compete. The Book relates how the Phoenician people came from a mixture of Rhinelanders and Finns with no doubt a portion of Lydas people from Tunisia, mixing with the inhabitants of Sidon.

It is known that languages and alphabets travel via trade, not migrations of people. The American version of English is an example of that, being used by the majority of citizens whose ancestors never spoke English.

Commerce cannot be accomplished without a number system and here again we miss-give the credit to the Arabs. They write from right to left like in the East but record numbers from left to right like in the West. Just look at arabic numbers. The important invention of the zero that was not part of the cumbersome Roman system is dated to the Middle Ages in Europe. Our symbol for zero in Arabic represents their number five and besides we have here, recorded in this book, numerical dates and quantities millennia before any Arab civilization. Most Semitic based languages solved the number problem by assigning a numerical value to each letter in their particular alphabetical sequence. The hieroglyphic languages on both the Old and the New world used a weighted building block system to count in numerical quantities such as six, ten, twenty, sixty and higher.

Because of the connections between Minno, a sixteenth century BC sea-king from the Rhine, and Crete the alphabets found on Crete should be mentioned. Dating from 1700 BC, clay tablets using a cipher referred to as Linear A have been found throughout Crete. It replaced an earlier hieroglyphic form, is written from left to right and was apparently used mainly for inventories, not literature. The language inscribed with the characters of Linear A is unknown but is presumed to be Minoan. These syllabic glyphs are believed to be forerunners of Linear B which was deciphered in 1952 and found to be early or Mycenaean Greek used from 1400 to 1150 BC only in Knossos. Throughout the long period of heroic history and into classical times, the alphabets made many changes, particularly to meet the needs of different languages that had "borrowed" their alphabets. This process does not appear to have happened until much later in the countries of origin or west Europe until the fourth century BC when many nations splintered off the motherland. The names of Classical Greek characters come from Hebrew or perhaps the related Hittite but the language and the symbols do not.

Again it is not the intention to prove or disprove this information but only to present it for what can be very interesting discussions. Here follows a section concerning the alphabet that comes from the "Writings of Minno" an ancient sea-king and was taken from the walls of an important sea-trading center. The date of the original inscriptions was probably the sixteenth century BC.

What Is Written Hereunder Is Inscribed On The Walls of Waraburgt:

What appears at the top is the signs of the Jule - that is, the first symbol of Wr-Alda, also of the origin or beginning from which Time is derived; this is the Kroder, which must always go round with the Jule. According to this model Frya formed the set hand which she used to write her Tex. When Fasta was Earth Mother she made a running hand out of it. The Witkoning - that is, the Sea-king Godfried the Old - made separate numbers for the set hand and for the runic hand. It is therefore not too much that we celebrate it once a year. We may be eternally thankful to Wr-Alda that he allowed his spirit to exercise such an influence over our forefathers.

In her time Finda also invented a mode of writing, but that was so high-flown and full of flourishes that her descendants have soon lost the meaning of it.

Afterwards they learned our writing - that is, the Finns, the Thyriers, (seamen of Tyre) and the Cretans - but they did not know that it was taken from the Jule, and must therefore always be written round like the sun. Furthermore, they wished that their writing should be illegible by other people, because they always had matters to conceal. In doing this they acted very unwisely, because their children could only with great difficulty read the writings of their predecessors, whereas our most ancient writings are as easy to read as those that were written yesterday.

When Christianity was struggling to replace the pagan religions of Western Europe, it is known that some propaganda devices were used to dissuade adherence to the old ways. One of these was the invention of the unlucky number, "thirteen," and in particular, "Friday the thirteenth." Friday was Fryas day and thirteen represented the number of twenty-eight day months in a year. (13 x 28 = 364).

Apparently a thirteen-month calendar was in use before the old Roman calendar that dated from the founding of Rome. The early Vedic calendar did use a twenty-eight day month with a leap-month every sixty months but most Hindu reckonings since then have used lunar calendars. The Egyptians had standardized on a thirty day month and the Greeks had adopted this system which probably influenced that early calendar, reformed by Tarquinius Priscius (616-579 BC), the fifth king of Rome. Prior to his time, the calendar had six months of thirty days and four of thirty-one days giving a total of only 304 days that were counted. After each winter break, it was restarted in March. One ancient vestige of the Teutons does survive and that is, the custom of counting nights instead of days. We have the fortnight or fourteen-night system, which is half of a twenty-eight day month.

Because the priests and senators of Rome had manipulated the calendar for political purposes, Julius Caesar felt the need to reform it, leaving us essentially the system used by the early Christians for 550 years. In the sixth century AD, it was proposed that the calendar be dated from the birth of Christ. They knew He had been born in the 28thyear of the reign of the emperor Augustus but forgot that he had already ruled for four years as Octavius before the senate conferred that august title on him, thus our modern calendar should have been dated from 4 BC.

The Julian Calendar had a total of 365 days and did contain one twenty-eight day month (with no weeks) that was relegated to the minor gods. In recent times, the International Fixed Calendar has been proposed in which the year is divided into thirteen months of twenty-eight days with an extra day at the end. Perhaps men are no longer feeling intimidated by the magic of the twenty-eight day menstrual cycle, a cycle close to but more easily facilitated than multiples of the lunar month of approximately 29 days. The concept however is not very original for such a calendar was in common use until the eighteenth century in spite of church influence. A twenty-eight day period was known as the ancient common month. Have we not all heard of the phrase, "a year and a day" and are there not many different references to the number thirteen?

FROM GODDESS TO KING

A History of Ancient Europe from the

OERA LINDA BOOK

By Anthony Radford

CHAPTER 3

THE GODDESS MYTHS

Papatuanuku A Maori representation of the creation myth. It represents the coming together of the Sky Father and the Earth Mother to give birth to a daughter and a son who created all of mankind.

Atthis time in the Nineties, there is much new literature on the goddess concept. Many books list all the traditional stories of powerful female figures from mythology and many now incorporate newly discovered (to the Western press that is), stories from the more remote cultures of the world. The world is full of stories and selecting a segment of them shows a need to reveal an underlying message, one that has not been fairly told, either traditionally or even with modern embellishment rewriting new traditions.

It may be discouraging to the feminists who are seeking the empowerment of modern women to learn that the Matriarchal Age, if it existed at all and then only in Western Europe, was not one of female domination or control but more enlightened. There existed an equality that is just beginning to be enjoyed again and only in a few nations of todays world; an age that called upon men and women in sometimes separate ways that were appropriate to the strengths of each. There was mutual respect as feminine wisdom was used to temper the more adventuresome or rash aspects of men. Sometimes women fought alongside men in defense of their home and on long commercial expeditions the voyages of the sea-kings included wives and families. Women had the responsibility of education, scientific research and were the conscience of communities, especially in foreign affairs.

Read Homer who describes a so-called pastoral age in which the status of women is not the same as men but neither is it inferior like in the Victorian Age from which we are still emerging.

What is aggravating to the reader of these modern publications is the lack of substantiating written material from long ago. The Oera Linda Book is one of the very few sources of written information surviving and gives us a more wholesome picture of those times than the subsequent mythology has portrayed. In a world dominated by the patriarchal government, family and the market place for thousands of years, the time has come for change. That world has engendered survival traits associated with feminine behavior as it is known. Compliance, even submissiveness, feminine intuition or wily ways, and subtle, less direct forms of communication have been associated with the feminine. Is this natural biological behavior or has it been learned of necessity?

Men and women are not the same thankfully even though the basic differences of being are very slight. It would be a mistake to try to make all members of society the same just as it would be foolish to attempt to reverse the situations of inequity. Fortunately evolution is working things out and more quickly than before. The rapidity of todays changes is no accident; it is of course related to the speed of communications in this electronic world, but more importantly, our consciousness is built upon all that has happened. We can remember and know what we really want and what to avoid. There will be resistance to change, even some backward steps but out of the diversity will come quality.

The Oera Linda Book shows us at least three distinct periods in which woman assumed major roles in the choices that have affected the planet before the dominance of the male. They stated that four and a half thousand years ago, when "the years were not counted" there were goddesses on Earth, females who lived beyond time and were able to ascend to the stars and were wise beyond learning. This was the mythology of these ancient peoples which is not unlike that still told today in much of the world and referred to in modern publications with increasing frequency as fourth-dimensional. The author does not wish to pursue this subject in this work except to point out that such beliefs were presented by the Book as facts like the histories and that several occult practices which were referred to as citadel practices are mentioned but not described.

This brings us to the second period of female overt contribution; the two thousand year age of the earth mothers and citadel maidens. Their contributions are detailed in the Book, which included many scientific practices concerning foreign plant specimens and anthropological exhibits that were collected by the voyages of the sea-kings. We owe many of our European tree and food sources to this research. They are depicted as practical, caring mothers of the towns, not goddesses but with knowledge from study that was the awe of the common man.

The third stage is more complicated as it was a reaction to the pragmatism of the earth mothers by both, a basic need to believe in the first age and a desire for power by the succeeding patriarchs. These men initially needed the mothers to give legitimacy to their ambitions, often deifying them so that proclamations could be made in the name of the deceased. Vile rituals were introduced to add to the fear and mystery and in many cases these high priestesses exercised an independent power that became a new tradition, the goddess age that eventually became referred to in Europe as the old religion.

The goddesses are taking their rightful place besides the gods of our aspirations. These concepts are as important to men as to women and cannot be denied by our powerful social conditioning. Men are discovering a feminine side that is not a sexual issue although too often it is confused as such. Both women and men who project a socially accepted role of conduct have ridiculed men for showing an understanding, a softer side or an emotional vulnerability. They have learned to guard their expression of these aspects and play the role. Women have taken their masculine presentation in the business world home to everyday life and likewise have lost a valuable part of themselves, sometimes even their marriages.

The Oera Linda Book is essentially the story of Fryas children. Frya was the mother of their race and her story was told with the same breath as the factual histories of sea-kings and the generals of military campaigns. She lived with them in the "Old Land" but after the disaster at the beginning of the Age of Aries, left the "Earth plain" but not before giving them laws for their own society on the mainland. In this book, the author is using the term "Matriarchal Age" to represent the Age of Aries from the point of view of the Western free people who were losing their lands over a two thousand year period to the invaders from the East. The yellow people imposed the "Patriarchal Age" onto Europe and did not consider Aries as a feminine age at all and so we have this attitude in our histories with only a mythical or even a mystical understanding of the feminine aspects.

Practically no myths have arisen out of Fryas people since the loss of Atland, that "Old Land" the former oceanic home. That is not to deny the rich folklore of Baltic and Germanic traditions but they evolved afterwards when the land was no longer Fryas, and by the mixed races of a later date. In this category we would have to add the diverse traditions of the original White Goddess which because of more popular classical literature has become a Greek legend. This is true but it is also always been a European legend. All our European and near Asian myths with which we are so familiar, come from that mixture of cultures, black, yellow and white which replaced the homogeneous continent described as "all Fryas children" before the "bad times came". The process began with the enslavement of the Slavonic race, the most remote members and continued with the steady advance of the Magyar-Finn people. This admission of that loss shows us how expansively these people believed the original free continent extended. Even Crete (or they could have been referring to Cyprus) is written about as being lost to the Mother in a time long before the story of Minos.

Whatever the heroes did in real life, the stories do better. The actions of the gods, ancestors and heroes do not have any autonomous intrinsic value, but they stir something that is both within and beyond us; they become sacred folklore. The mythicization of historical personages occurs in sagas and poems soon after their physical death, even in historically recent times such as in the cases of Rip Van Winkle or that of George Washington. The true facts of heroes are ignored for the archetype of the mythical hero. It was the Finns that deified Wodin, not the Frisians who stayed at home. His military exploits were as entertaining as his family adventures thus giving the people to come, a vicarious sense of participation in these activities.

It is interesting to note that most of our known myths come from subjugated peoples, those so often mentioned in the Oera Linda Book as subject to priests and princes. In modern democracies and according to the Book, in the ancient lands of Frya, few myths arose from contemporary personages perhaps because a free expression of our own autonomy does not need the entertainment of a myth to do that for one. We still have that tendency however in our adulation of sport and movie heroes who nearly always turn out in personal life to be just as frail and vulnerable as anyone else. And it is the young who are not yet free in our competitive society that give the greatest acclaim to the present day super heroes of the moment.

Typically, the new gods have their lineage rewritten here. Wodin or Odin was acclaimed to be of parentage by the Magy the leader of the Finns. Of course his grandson by Wodin and his daughter would be all the more legitimate for the succession, a principle not part of the traditions of the occupying army. Here is an example of the beginning of claiming divine rights for kings in Europe, nothing divine, just politics as usual, duping the populace. Spouses of the new divinities also became divine just as the more ancient belief in the families of the gods is a repeating pattern.

When we eulogize the deceased at a service or wake, it pleases us to see the good in them even if it is larger than the actual life of the departed. It pleases us to remember the best in our own lives and forget the mediocre. And so we have myths of Odin, Minerva, Neptune, Minos and Ulysses, all real people who have been placed on the stage of fantasy for our enjoyment.

The concept of the Earth Mother is usually equated with a preliterate religion where Mother Earth is the eternal source of the everyday needs of life. Although considered female, as she gives birth to all things and all things die and return to her, she is not presumed a sexual being needing intercourse to gestate. That her breasts feed everything is symbolic. It is a symbolic concept reflecting the comfort of personification and an example of `as in the microcosm, so in the macrocosm. The Book refers to Irtha as a female deity and after Wr-Alda (their term for God) as the most ancient one in importance. Then it shows the mythical beliefs of three goddesses, Lyda, Finda and Frya as being the actual mothers of the races of mankind.

Finally, the word Eeremoeder or Earth Mother is used as the title of the chief of state elected from the various Mothers or the leading maiden in the many district citadels. All this is from a period before most of classical mythology was formulated so naturally these myths and our personal abstractions are a combination of old beliefs and historical figures. This is a universal concept that in various forms is recounted throughout the world. In Hinduism there is Gaya who corresponds with Irtha and Gaea in classical mythology, but in the southern forested regions, Mother Earth is a great goddess whose marriage with the Earth or the Sun is celebrated annually. The Maoris of the South Pacific represented Papatuanuku as earth mother who with Rangi (the Sky Father) were their primal parents. In one version of the Chinese Earth myth, Ti Mu (earth mother) and Tien Lung (Celestial Dragon) are credited with reproducing all of creation, including man. In another delightful version, a god, Plua Ku fashioned man from clay, some of which became wet with rain and so gave deformed people.

Baltic mythology is typical of much of Europe in that it has male sky gods and female earth gods except in Lithuanian tradition where they also have an Earth Master. Deities have always been given mates and in many instances have changed their sex such as in China where Buddha became Kwan Yin, an exception to the usual rule of female to male transformations. It was a slow transformation because in the Sixth Dynasty in the sixth century AD there was Guanyin, a male Bodhisattva, whose statues could easily be mistaken for female. That Buddhist mythology, which is usually limited to male stories making an intellectual point, should transform Buddha himself to a mother figure is understandable. A female Buddha had to be created and the virgin mother of Sakyamuni, Mahamaya (Great Consort) became the mother of all Buddhas, showing how Buddhist discipline could not escape its Hindu origins. She was known as Tara and is identified with supreme wisdom just as Sophia was once a feminine aspect of God, in early Christian theology, suppressed by male decree while female figures became male in the telling of a myth.

In classical Greek myth, the Hesperides were the daughters of Hesperus or the Daughters of the Evening Land. Their names were Aegle, Erytheis, Hespera and Hestia (Fasta). They were said to dwell beyond the ocean at the extreme western limit of the world. They lived in a wondrous garden and guarded its golden apples or some say its celestial flock of sheep. This myth speaks of western origins and identifies wonders out there.

There was once an old satyr named Silenus who was sleeping after drinking too much wine in a rose garden that was owned by King Midas. The guards bound him and brought him before the king whom he assuaged with wondrous tales of a huge continent lying beyond the ocean and separate from either Europe or Africa (legendary Atlantis?). Those people had splendid cities, enjoyed an equitable legal system, and were tall and lived long. They launched a mighty expedition on ships to the land of Hyperboria (the land beyond the north winds) but determined it to be no more desirable than their own country. Silenus told Midas many fantastic tales, which may have saved him from the Kings displeasure or may have been from the known stories of that time. There are other stories of Hyperboria mentioned by Herodotus. People lived a thousand years in that paradisal place but soon died when they left it. It was like a western version of Shangri-La.

That many significant Greek gods had an eastern origin or counterpart is not in question. The point is, a civilization that must have seemed wondrous to the early Greeks existed in the west or northwest.

Of enormous importance to the whole national concept of unity to Fryas peoples were the sacred lamps. The first mention of them comes in the goddess Fryas `Tex that she gave to the first Earth Mother, Fasta. Before Frya left the earth plane, she said:

"Then shall the lamp which I have lighted for you never be extinguished. Its brightness shall always illuminate your intellect, and you shall always remain as free from foreign domination as your fresh river-water is distinct from the sea."

And so the whole concept of nationalism and freedom began. The sacred lamp is mentioned twenty-two times in the Book but there is no mention of sacred fire. It is easy to combine the two but not really appropriate as nowhere in the Book is there mention of sacrifices or sacrificial fire made except in disgust when referring to the rituals of the Magy. There are cruel entries of the use of fire as a legal punishment just as it has been used in more recent historical times but it can be assumed that the lamp symbolized light or enlightenment of consciousness and freedom.

A new citadel could not be consecrated except with a lamp lit from the original one at in Fryasburgt in Texland. The Tex states:

When a citadel is built, the lamp belonging to it must be lighted at the original lamp in Texland, and that can only be done by the mother.

The mother of Texland may have twenty-one maidens and seven assistants, so that there may always be seven to attend the lamp day and night.

It does not take such a large number of maidens to keep a light burning at all times so Frya must have had other benefits in mind for her chosen ones. These were the benefits of meditating on the light, a practice gaining popularity in the West at this time but long rendered in the East and apparently in the ancient West as well. This practice was considered essential to maintain a wholly state of mind for the maidens whose duties were similar to the magistrates of today but also combined elements of the academic world of biology, astronomy, education and the serious side of international peacekeeping.

When many women learn of the history of the deliberate suppression of the feminine aspects of God by the Church there is anger against men in general but actually the present goddess movement is related to the re-empowerment of women. She may not be staying home raising his children so much now but is still subject to the "patronizing" social definitions she did not help establish. There exists today besides, just formal religion and our language inequities, injustices in such services as health. Traditionally women have been healers, using plants and tender loving care to cure but our medical institutions, staffed with masculine doctors of both sexes, enforce a male power-stand for prescription drugs and appears to be against herbs and nutrition. Has this not led us into the present health crises of expensive medicine? It has been proven that "feminine" remedies of touching, caring and problem attention rather than symptom fixing can greatly reduce health costs, which ought to be of interest to insurance companies, as well as state budget mongers, even if not to the medical associations. Were not the witch hunts male attacks on female healers?

FROM GODDESS TO KING

A History of Ancient Europe from the

OERA LINDA BOOK

By Anthony Radford

CHAPTER 2

THE GEOLOGICAL DISASTERS

Mankindhas traditionally divided his ancient past into ages such as those that the eighth century BC poet Hesiod from Greece described. They were, according to him, four in number and symbolized by gold, silver, bronze, and iron during which mans consciousness declined. If this were so then our early ancestors were not bestial primitives but noble heroes. That thought might be aroused in reading the source of this material but it would be more advantageous to find the similarities we still possess, to be more watchful of our communities and the true motivation and capabilities of our officers.

Today there is a lot of interest in the coming Age of Aquarius, one of the ways that we divide our history on a long time basis. Still in use today are the twelve names of the zodiac, which are related to a Great Year of 25,920 Earth years, first recorded in ancient Sumer. Astronomers say this is not the rotation of our Milky Way galaxy which has a period of 250,000 years but a wobble in the axis of the Earth plus a spin or precession of a local arm of our galaxy where our own Solar system is located. It represents an apparent rotation of the stars as seen from Earth, an apparent direction relative to our own galaxy but not to any larger order of the universe. Still that is a very big concept for this tiny portion of the universe wherein all directions are relative anyway. Dividing this Great Year by twelve, we get 2,160 or one Zodiacal Year. This is a period related to the constellations that are seen and named in the sky. This list of zodiacal ages shows the time period of the Book.

A table of these ages can be shown thus:

• Age of Aquarius 23,820 BC to 21,660 BC
• Age of Capricorn 21,660 BC to 19,500 BC
• Age of Sagittarius 19,500 BC to 17,340 BC
• Age of Scorpion 17,340 BC to 15,180 BC
• Age of Virgo 13,020 BC to 10,860 BC
• Age of Leo 10,860 BC to 8,700 BC
• Age of Cancer 8,700 BC to 6,540 BC
• Age of Gemini 6,540 BC to 4,380 BC
• Age of Taurus 4,380 BC to 2,220 BC
• Age of Aries 2,220 BC to 60 BC
• Age of Pisces 60 BC to 2,100 AD
• Age of Aquarius 2,100 AD to 4,260 AD

These ages also represent a change in consciousness, not just astronomical directions and are therefore not limited to an exact period. Many people now feel the speed of todays events and are already celebrating the new age of the Water Carrier without having to wait another hundred years. There is also a sense that the change of an age should be accompanied by something dramatic like the birth of a savior or perhaps a natural disaster of continental proportions. Maybe this is why stories are current about the loss of California into the Pacific Ocean.

This sense may be reinforced by our own history as the first geological disaster described and dated in the Oera Linda Book occurred in 2,193 BC. This was just twenty-seven years after the astronomical date for the end of the Age of the Bull and the beginning of the Age of the Ram. The description tells of three years of prior rumbling or heaviness in the air followed by one to two hundred years of "bad times" when total reconstruction of society was obligatory. At this time invaders swept in from the east and occupied the devastated lands, the barrier forests of which the Black Forest is a tiny remnant, were penetrated by the Finns and the Magyars, and at night the foe rested in the foe-rest.

The Cimbrian Flood has been dated from the same time period but is more likely to be much later because it gets its name from the Cimbri, a Germanic tribe that is remembered for their incursion into Roman Italy in 101 BC. and for other victories over the Romans. In alliance with the Teutons they fought in 113, 109, and 107 BC. The tradition is that they were forced out of Denmark by the encroaching sea and migrated southwards until they felt the expansion of Rome They numbered half a million by then. The Oera Linda Book mentions another flood in the region of Denmark in 305 BC which could be that disturbance remembered in their tribal story. It is interesting to note that the Cimbri are also referred to in very ancient Welsh ballads. They were the name of the people who sought to return to Wales (in Westland) from Crimea after their ancestors were forced out by a flood. The Briti (hence Britain) were another of their tribes. At this time it is appropriate to explain the use of the word "German". Its first mention is in the time of Caesar when the Germani were described as those tribesmen who crossed over the Rhine into Roman territory. Those already under occupation were called the Galli, a distinction that has divided Germans from Celts ever since. The ancient name for Germany was Twiskland with the people east of the Rhine being called Twiskars but these people did not have a common name for themselves. The Oera Linda Book has much to say on the origins of many various peoples, more mixed than previously supposed. The author uses the term Germanic to represent all West European language groups particularly those that predate Latin and as a more generic word than in the modern sense.

The prodigious events of the twenty-second century BC must have been felt around the world but few societies have records, which go back that far. The geologists will have to explore this further but the event should have been recorded in ancient Egypt and indeed it was. The events were stupendous enough to have been not recorded as no pharaoh survived to erect a monument for two hundred years. About 2,200 BC Egypts First Intermediary Period began after the first ten contiguous dynasties abruptly ended. The religious center at Heliopolis and the capital of Memphis (Greek names for Egyptian cities) were destroyed. The country was overrun, repeatedly ravaged and pillaged by barbarian horsemen from what is now believed to be the east or the land of Arabia. Eventually order was restored in Upper Egypt with a new capital at Thebes under the Eleventh Dynasty. After two hundred years, the Twelfth Dynasty reunited the country with much rebuilding of the temples and Ra, the premier god of old Egypt was renamed Amon; a new age began with very little reference to why this all occurred. Who survived to record the events?

The Old Testament tells the story of Sodom and Gomorra, two Cities of the Plain which are thought to have been the result of a geological disturbance about 2000 BC. However there are no young volcanic rocks in the area of the Dead Sea if that area is an accurate assessment of the site. The numerous asphalt deposits in the fault plagued region do suggest a different type of disturbance could have caused the events reported in Genesis; even the occurrence of natural gas fires. That there is a connection with the disturbance in northwest Europe at the time would be pure speculation.

The next great disaster of mythology is that one which has been dated presumably at the end of the Minoan civilization and the beginning of the classical Greek one, but is now known to have occurred a hundred years earlier. It is one of the last stories of the Greek myths, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, of Daedalus and Icarus. About 1650 BC, the destruction of Knossos on Crete and the city of Aquatilia on Thera, an island north of Crete, have strengthened the contention that Crete was the site of Atlantis of a much older time. That there was earthquake and fire has been determined but the date remains approximate. When was this event? New research shows it to be as early as 1650 BC but others give a date as late as 1050 BC. Nobody knows for sure as the disasters mentioned in any one area could have been very devastating but actually local to that area.

This disturbance is not mentioned directly in the Oera Linda Book but an earthquake is recorded in Egypt and land disturbances in Persia that can be dated to the beginning of the sixteenth century BC. Also there are many centuries of history that have been lost to us in this one surviving record. Eastern Mediterranean quakes may not have been known in the north and west of Europe just as there is little datable evidence for the European quakes of 305 BC that are detailed in the Book in the history of the Mediterranean and the Near East. This disaster is more extensively described than the first one, even though it could not have been as devastating as the 2193 BC events, because it occurred at a time when they were deliberately writing down their history. The warning signs should be of vital interest now that there is much current speculation on the possibility of a major quake in our time. The signs at that time included three years of volcanic fires with little sun and an ominous feeling perhaps from subsonic rumblings. Exceptional weather and seismic events can be easily measured today but we are still surprised when something happens.

In order to relate geological events to historical and mythical ones, a brief chronological table of significant events mentioned in the Oera Linda Book is here included. Dates are approximated when not specifically known. So many stories are told over such a long period in history that it is difficult to write an overview until the story itself is read but there are messages for us as well as adventures to excite and capture our imagination. Why do we find a fascination with stories from the past and why do only some of us want to vicariously share particular adventures? Perhaps we have lived them ourselves; been a pirate or a lonely farm wife waiting for her man to come home and wondering what tales he would bring.

Here is the list:

• BC
• 2193 Sinking of Atland.
• 2163 Alternative calculation for the sinking.
• 2150 The end of the Early Minoan period.
• 2140 Fasta opens a citadel at Medesblik.
• 2092 Finns settle in Finland.
• 2012 Minna, Earth Mother. Finns overran Schoonland.
• 2011 Wodin leads campaign to free Schoonland.
• 2000 Teunis founds Tyre, south of Sidon.
• 1750 The end of the Middle Minoan period.
• 1650 The eruption of Mt. Thera.
• 1650 The end of Late Minoan-A.
• 1620 Jon goes to the Mediterranean.
• 1615 Possible time Minerva founded Athens.
• 1600 Kalta founds the Celtic Empire.
• 1600 Minno and the beginnings of classical Crete.
• 1590 Burgtmaid Geert of Athens.
• 1555 Destruction of Knossos, end of Minoan civilization.
• 1550 Geertmen settle in the Punjab.
• 1500 Aryan invasion of India.
• 1400 Date of the Vedas.
• 1200 - 1190 The Trojan war.
• 1188 Story of Ulysses.
• 591 Earth Mother Frana at Texland.
• 586 Invasion of Texland and murder of Frana.
• 560 Adela acting as un-elected Earth Mother.
• 558 The first book of the Book of Adela written.
• 557 Further invasions and murder of Adela.
• 540 Apollonia writes of previous generation.
• 325 Geertmen leave Punjab with Nearchus.
• 323 Death of Alexander.
• 305 Second geological disaster
• 305 Demetrius sieges Rhodes.
• 304 Gosa Makonta elected Earth Mother.
• 303 Return of the Geertmen.
• 290 Time of Frethorik and Wiljo, contributors to the Book.
• 265 The death of Friso.
• 250 Adel becomes chief count with his bride Ifkja.
• 250 Rebuilding projects described by Konered.
• 70 Approximate time of King Askar
• 50 Caesar annexes Gaul to Rome.
• 10 Beeden contributes to the Book.
• AD
• 803 Liko Over de Linda saves the Book from a flood.
• 1256 Hiddo Over de Linda recopies the Book on new paper.
• 1848 Cornelius Over de Linden receives the Book from his aunt.
• 1867 Dr. Verwijs translates the Book.
• 1871 Dutch translation of the Book.
• 1876 English language publication of the Oera Linda Book.

Todays archaeologist uses many modern techniques to make archaeology closer to an exact science. Carbon dating, microspore analysis, metallurgical analysis and clay or stone identification has moved the speculative side to unexamined sites. The problem of finding evidence to support or disprove the Book is that few discoveries have been made or examined in the northern oceans. Many harbors and cities have been found all around the Mediterranean that have been submerged, but the North has colder waters of shifting sands and kelp beds, where it is not as rewarding or convenient for the undersea explorer to work in sunless weeds. In Helgoland, a North Frisian island that is now part of Germany again, underwater walls and foundations using six-foot stones have been found. They measure five hundred feet long and surround a hill containing the remains of more structures. This was once a citadel or castle fortified by several concentric walls, now under water.

We know that the oceans are rising at about three or four inches every century because of the melting of the ice caps but the studies done in the Mediterranean do not give any regular dating of flooded cities in proportion to how deep they are submerged. The Greek City of Helike abruptly sank in the fourth century BC that relates to the second disaster in the Book but shows that no smooth theory can be applied. Some areas go up as others go down. This is particularly true in Scandinavia where the removal of the ice has permitted the peninsula to rise 1500 feet in the last 10,000 years with a present rate of three feet each century. This elevation of one area would permit the submergence of another and it is so told in the Book, not as a slow change every century but as an abrupt disaster in 2193 BC.

It is also known that for more than a thousand years the sea did not rise in the Mediterranean so that averages over long periods have little meaning for any century; sudden changes or earthquakes being more likely to occur. The archaeologist is being forced to join with the geologist, the oceanographer and the new scientists studying gravimetric data from space satellites to discover the ancient coastlines of countries and archaeological sites.

Disasters will always happen but the world continues to spin. It is quite encouraging to read of the social recovery of the various peoples described as life goes on with a combination of the old and the new writing another chapter of history. The Book describes how new harbors or mooring were made, citadels rebuilt and of various peoples settling and reclaiming lost land. With our reliance on highways, pipelines and power-lines it makes one wonder if modern man can survive such an ordeal as easily as can a simple rural society. We are told how the black rowers, all men, took to the ships and survived. They found willing white women whose menfolk did not survive at sea and the races blended again. Social distrust of the new mixed settlers occurred just as it still does today but then, the last Earth Mother, Gosa counseled acceptance of this new social order from the only citadel that was not destroyed.

If ones tries to find similarities in facts and beliefs in pre-Christian mythology to support the authenticity of the Oera Linda Book then it is not an exact science; it merely shows various similarities of references that prove nothing but they do kindle the imagination. For example, what can be found in the earliest Irish and Welsh stories which have survived Christian influence? There are many such stories relating to fire, flood and conquest and parallels can be drawn to the disasters mentioned but as there is no way to verify the dates referred to, then only a feeling of familiarity can be ascertained from them. The traditional date for the first people of Ireland is 145 years after that of the disaster they recorded as 2193 BC.

Celtic mythology for Ireland is considered the least influenced or distorted but it was recorded during Christian times, as early as the eighth century AD and as late as the fourteenth. Their earliest story tells of the origin of the first known peoples, the first race having perished in the biblical flood. The next race to invade Ireland about 2048 BC was a group of twenty-four males and twenty-four females led by Partholon, a male father figure. They found only a treeless landscape of lakes and rivers but for five hundred years they multiplied and had to fight against the Fomorians, a race of demons who used supernatural powers and were reputed to have come from Africa. African settlers in Europe are mentioned several times in the Book and contributed their genes to the European mixture almost as prolifically as the migrations from Asia but to return to the Irish story... The Partholon were decimated by a pestilence which was followed a generation later by natural disasters that cleared newly grown forests and formed new lakes. At that time (1718 BC) the country was invaded by the Nemed who also had to fight the Fomorians and were eventually defeated and driven from Ireland.

The only references that can be taken from this is the prestidigitatious number of twenty-four males and females, which is similar to the story of Lyda, Finda and Frya, the three mother goddesses of the human race according to the most ancient mythology of the Book. They each bore twelve couples per year for twelve years. But twelve and twenty-four are magic numbers in ancient myths. Perhaps the Fomorians could be linked to a branch of the Finns whose Magi or priest king used magic in battle. The two disasters hinted at were approximately five or six hundred years apart and they do not relate to the twenty-third, sixteenth and fourth century BC natural disasters. Even the dates taken from other sources make it very difficult to even speculate on a correspondence between myths. Geological disasters were most likely to be local and if global or continental in magnitude, then not recorded by the struggling survivors.

FROM GODDESS TO KING

A History of Ancient Europe from the

OERA LINDA BOOK

By Anthony Radford

CHAPTER 1

MODERN DISCOVERY

Frontpage of the first English translation of the Oera Linda Book.

InApril of 1820, at the small town of Enkhuizen opposite the West Frisian Island of Texel in the Netherlands, Den Heer Andries Over de Linden died. Among his effects was found a very old manuscript that no one could read. He was sixty-one years old and his daughter, then Mrs. Aafjie Meylhoff, knew how a long and sacred tradition had always existed in their family concerning this book. For countless generations since before anyone could remember, it had been kept in the Over de Linden family, being handed down from father to son, with very strict instructions to preserve and protect it from the authorities, and that meant the Church. The next heir at that time was her nephew, Cornelius Over de Linden, who was only ten years of age, his father having died several years before the grandfather. His aunt, Aafjie, kept the book in safekeeping awaiting the time when the next custodian would be of age.

Cornelius grew up in the same area where his ancestors had always lived, and became a master shipwright of the Royal Netherlands Dockyards at the Helder, but it was not until 1848, that Mrs. Meylhoff handed over the manuscript with all the traditional instructions to her nephew. Always he had been curious about the story the book told, the story he could not read, but still he waited an additional nineteen years before taking the initiative, in 1867, to find someone who could translate the manuscript. He approached the Provincial Library at Leeuwarden in Friesland where the librarian, Dr. Verwijs, on hearing about the manuscript asked to see it. He immediately recognized it as very ancient Frisian, perhaps the oldest example of it he had yet encountered. His first impression was that the book was some kind of hoax, but on examination, he was convinced of its extreme age. Consequently, with much excitement, he persuaded Cornelius Over de Linden to let him make a careful copy of the whole book for the benefit of the Friesland Society.

Dr. Verwijs then sought financial backing from the Society that was devoted to research of the Frisian language and history but was met with immediate skepticism. Perhaps he was too revealing of some opening fragments he had already translated. The Society thought it was a forgery from the beginning, even before being able to consult it, setting a tone that has haunted the Oera Linda Book ever since. Dr. Verwijs was, however, successful in receiving a commission from a deputy states alderman of Friesland to edit a copy. This meant his library facilities could sanction the work while funding was being sought.

The work continued for another three years revealing startling and fantastic information that initially confirmed Dr. Verwijs first suspicions of forgery, but as he continued to translate, more and more stories supported known historical and mythological data and won the complete confidence of the translator. That is to say, so far as the history it contained was related, for the book contained its own mythology which could be recognized as such just as the well known Greek and Old Testament stories were not always taken literally. Eventually, financial assistance did come in the person of Dr. J. G. Ottema, who enthusiastically supported the expenses of the translation, printing and publishing the first copy in modern Frisian under the title of "Thet Oera Linda Bok".

In February, 1871, a paper was presented to the Friesland Society that summarized these origins and mentioned a few of the startling statements found in its contents, causing instant controversy. Why that was so is perhaps not surprising if we look at these statements but first the reader must magnify the attachments of the present time to the long cherished beliefs of a church or temple dominated heritage, to understand the attitudes of the time. Science was replacing theology in history and anthropology. The discovery and subsequent translation of the Rosetta Stone had occurred only fifty years earlier, giving birth to the modern concepts of ancient history based on the Egyptian calendar, right or wrong.

We have since discovered the much older civilization of Sumer and yet most text books still give this honor to Egypt. Heinrich Schlieman had not yet published his discoveries concerning the actual historical site of Troy, a town mentioned and even datable in the Book. Legends were still considered fairy tales without any factual content as indeed many consider them today. More importantly, we have a long standing tradition of the classical scholars surviving in Europe, through the translations of the Church and verified with several hundred years of second sourcing through Arabic in Spain of the same Greek originals. First come ideas are very hard to challenge.

The Frisian language version was immediately followed by a Dutch language translation of the same name and it was the Dutch version that was translated into English in 1876. This edition shows the original Frisian text printed on the left page in Roman characters with the English translation on the right. It created quite a stir when published but was soon forgotten in academic circles; too controversial or perhaps it meant too much effort to rethink our traditional ideas.

The original manuscript uses what are now called phonetic characters with arabic numerals but with its own form of construction. These phonetic characters are selected from a circle, the sun sign, with a vertical "I" and an "X" crossing it giving surprisingly, a character set or context in which most letters of the alphabet and numbers are easily recognized by modern Europeans and Americans. They were recorded by Hiddo, surnamed Over de Linda in the year 1256 AD. He copied his originals onto the new arabic paper, very desirable in Europe at the time, which was made from basic Egyptian cotton without watermark. He called it foreign paper and used a carbon ink without iron. This was fortunate because the more popular iron based inks were used at a later date and are easily recognizable by their discoloration, giving us one more piece of evidence to support the Books authenticity. The opening page by Hiddo, is a letter to his son Okke with instructions to "Preserve these books with body and soul."

How many of the works of the original eight or more authors were copied or else translated into Hiddos language of the time is not known. Did he use the characters current in his land or did he painstakingly transcribe his damaged source material? We know that some terms modern to him were used and we also know that the style and variant spelling of the original writers were preserved. No evidence of anything more modern than the thirteenth century has been found, but even some place names created by the Roman occupation in the time of Julius Caesar were not used in the text.

Challenges there were, revealed by the Oera Linda Book. Did European civilization come out of Asia in the East or was there a western source as well and what was that? No claim is being made about the origins of civilized communities in the world but the Book claims a western source for its own system of government, community and moral code for Europe. There are even descriptions of a much more ancient community across the north Atlantic, the Old Land, their ancient home, that are given in nostalgic terms as the good times before the bad.

Did our concepts of common law and democracy come from Asia through classical Greece and Rome? We will read about a democratic system of government using the endowments of both men and women for their respective advantages. The world would have to wait until late in the nineteenth century for a similar equality, both domestic and also at the highest government level, to be found again in Europe. The Matriarchal Age as described in the Book was one of cooperation, not dominance by any sex or monarch but this however, was a heritage lost to the corruption that power always engenders. Our Eastern heritage has always been dominated by male autocrats but this book describes a time before the democracies or oligarchies of the Greek city states whose own fervor fall very short of the ideals expressed. There are many sections recorded for the explicit purpose of protecting these democratic rights and freedoms.

Is the generally understood concept of the evolution of European languages correct? Both Latin and Greek are younger languages than the precursors of the West German group and have received many root words from the latter, and even the Persian language has more Germanic root words than any other source. If you open your dictionary to the familiar page of the family tree of European languages you see that the invented Indo-European gives rise to Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Albanian, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Hellenic, Italic and Keltic, a convenient way of showing that the scholars do not know this story. A distinction has to be made between the form of the alphabet characters used, the names of the alphabet letters, their sequence and the number system in use. Each of these characteristics can evolve separately and be taken from very different sources.

The Book describes the settlement of familiar peoples like the Finns, Phoenicians, Tunisians, Gauls, Britons, Celts, Cretans, Greeks, Ionians, Danes, Franks and Scots. Many more are named in India and the countries to the west of the Punjab. It tells of extensive trade between nations, which is more important for the adoption of languages than the actual settlement of peoples. It even describes how different peoples were corrupting the "mother tongue".

On the language tree commonly found in dictionaries, Old Frisian is a "generation" or two younger than the classical languages but this book is written in and laments its own language deterioration of a time before Latin, before Greek. Was this Indo-European? They write of trade and settlement in India in 1550 BC by the sea-kings of the Rhine. They even tell the story of the settlement of Phoenicia five hundred years before that and how their written language which is clearly related to what we use today, was adopted by the Phoenician traders. This was probably the origin of the Greek alphabet, the symbols that is, and not necessarily their names which is of a much more modern construction.

In the beginnings of recorded history, a number system, a means of recording the quantities of trades or taxes began in the East with clay representations of the items, pressed or represented as many times as the quantity transacted. Then variant symbols were used to represent larger packages or groupings of these items. It can be understood how impossible this would soon become to a maritime nation dealing with the diverse products of foreign nations and so a new system was worked out in the West.

In the East the order of the particular alphabets was used at that time to represent a weighted number system but clearly it has its limitations with international trade where different alphabets or sequence of letters were in use. These arguments imply that records would have to be shared in order to trade or barter and particularly if any contracts for future delivery were to be made and this is one reason why languages follow trade rather than the migrations of peoples.

The story of the sea-kings is the commercial history of Europe for we are told how important these huge organized expeditions were to the life-styles of the Europeans even to those as remote as Switzerland who traded in items destined to fill the bottoms of the ships. The sea-king or "Witkoning" was elected to command these well-armed trading expeditions. The Book tells us of one old sea-king of about four thousand years ago, who devised a weighted-number system of symbols that were deliberately constructed not long after the invention of the phonetic alphabet and in the same style. This is essentially what we are using today and calling it arabic but if it were also called phonetic it would not be a contradiction of this cherished belief. This is because the Phoenicians began their history at this time as a direct result of the actions of a sea-king from the Rhine. They were a racially mixed group from Western Europe that founded Tyre or Thyrhisburgt, a city south of older Sidon. Their maritime skills and tribal groups did not directly come from the East the priests of Sidon were soon to influenced their religious and political systems.

Some of the heroes of Homer and gods and goddesses of ancient Greece are described as real historical personages such as Hestia, Neptune, Minerva, Calypso and Ulysses. Then we read of the European gods, Wodin and Frya, (Odin and Freya) of mythological names such as the Magi, Celtics, and dozens of place names and how they came to be so named. This book is an etymologists delight. Word origins of the Druids, Gaul, the Vestal Virgins, even Calypso and magic are mentioned.

With these challenges to established ideas, there is no question the new translations were very sensational to the academic community who on the whole assured everyone that it was a hoax. European newspapers were quick to print defamatory letters and articles from persons who had not studied the contents of the translations and obviously not the original.

Following the English language translation from the Dutch, London newspapers gave the book a brief notoriety but there was little serious study and even less of its ideas and information entering the history books. It was basically forgotten. In the nineteen-twenties a few articles and some books were published but most of them defamatory. It is now time to take a new look at what this remarkable history of a nearly forgotten people actually says because it is our story too.

These challenges to established beliefs were hard enough to take but when their own mythology, recorded by them in the same style as their history was revealed, it was too much for the new scientific scholars to stand. They forgot our own myths and how some have been shown to tell of real personages. We have the stories of the Flood and Atlantis. They had stories of geological catastrophes and of Atland, the "Old Land". They are not to be confused with those stories which are believed to be describing a time of possibly eleven thousand years ago such as Platos Atlantis but it is most likely that some of these stories have been incorporated into the writings of Plato. Their events were quite precisely dated and recorded by them as fact and cover a time span of from 2193 BC to 70 BC.

We have inherited traditional zodiacal terminology from Sumer and they are still used by modern astronomers. Using these names we put the Age of Aries at from 2220 BC to 60 BC so that this book is really a European story of the Age of Aries. There were other books referred to in the text, books that came about as a deliberate attempt to record their history before it was lost. These were written on instructions by one of the last of the earth mothers; one who herself was never elected to that office, but unfortunately they have not survived.

This is really the story of the decline and fall of the Matriarchal Age of Europe and the relentless pressure of the invasion of the original white peoples of Europe by the yellow peoples of Asia. Only some of the more isolated populations of Holland and Scandinavia show surviving examples of this blood line today.

Apparently much of Europe had once enjoyed a citadel system for their society and government. Each diverse community had their councils of Aldermen to make their economic laws that filled their defensive and land-use requirements but these decisions had to meet the strict guidelines of the sacred `Tex or constitution to ensure justice and freedom for all. The citadels housed the maidens, with a copy of the "Tex" inscribed on the walls together with proud moments from their histories. The priestesses by their scholarship determined appeals much as our own Supreme Court does now. The head maiden or virgin was called a mother and was in correspondence with the mothers of other cities.

The Earth Mother was elected from candidates that were often recommended from the various citadels by the previous Earth Mother in her will. She resided at the most important and largest citadel that was located at Fryasburgt in Texland near the northern mouth of the Rhine that they called Flymeer or the mouth of the Fly River. Her duties were exemplary for the protection of the ethical welfare of the continent but she was also able to call a national levy for the defense of the whole confederation.

There is no European race or color characteristic corresponding to that which can be identified in most other places of the globe. The straight black hair and brown eyes of the yellow skinned Asiatic invaders have interbred with the fine straight yellow hair, blue eyes of the tall white indigenous race to create the mixed hair and eye coloring found in individual families today of so-called Europeans. Varying degrees of crinkly-haired black people from Africa were also bred into the mix depending on location and on the journeys of the sea-kings that often used foreign rowers. When the black blood mixed directly with the original white blood the result could be red, that new human coloring with wavy hair, white skin and freckles, not really one that could have survived a million years of natural selection without the protections that civilized communities afford. Even today when some Melanesians form blood families with a genetic survivor of the white race the result can be piebald, and take generations to blend into normal freckles.

These European peoples whose only common name was "friends" or the "Children of Frya" wanted to protect their culture and freedom from the priests and princes of the invaders. Their laws show a strong educational and even propaganda aspect designed to save their democratic system based on their constitution that protected the rights of individuals. It also cared for the less fortunate members of society instilling a moral code of self-reliance and cooperation. Our present country in North America was founded with these concepts and in its young days of settlement and expansion, families did more than just barn-raising for their communities. Many of these basic feelings of community are now buried too deep as individual profit is placed above community service.

Who were the contributors to the Book? The Book and apparently others that have not survived were written at the direct request of Adela, described herein as the un-elected Earth Mother about 560 BC. She was afraid their long history and customs would be lost with the invasions of the Magyars and Finns that were causing such devastation at the time. They had already invaded and killed the Earth Mother at their federal capital of Fryasburgt in Texland and were within striking distance of Adelas own family compound. They were soon to kill both Adela and her husband Apol but this was not to be the end of the Frisians as a resurgence occurred that took another four hundred years to be lost again. This time it was lost to cultural changes, not conquest as the ways of freedom gave way to the ways of the royal tyrants that even in modern times have inspired an undeserved loyalty or dependence.

The writers of the Book (see plate 8), were for the most part descendants of Adela in the Oera Linda family. At first they copied down the inscriptions from the walls of the citadels and great trading ports that were originally inscribed fifteen hundred years earlier. This has given us a precious insight into history before the age of the classical myths, an insight showing real historical personages that in some cases were deified for political advantage and in other cases because the social conditions had deteriorated to the level of superstition and witchcraft.

After recording their own history, the various writers wrote of their own times. Those sections have information that came more closely to direct observation and they are rich in personal stories of this family and their countrymen in times of triumph and the struggles of defeat, defeat of their principles. We are given an observation into the final process of the deposition of the cooperative matriarchal age by the dominating patriarchal one, an age that we have only now begun to question in this century.

There are stories told that are as exciting as any romantic novel or panoramic screen, telling us how little changed we are after thousands of years. How our desires and ambitions are forever wrestling with our social conscience and how the virtuous get little reward beyond their own virtue in the real world. But in spite of the over all, very long term demise of this way of life, it has left its mark upon us in many ways. It has marked the conscience of the whole world, not just a racially protective group in Western Europe. Seen with cosmic eyes over millennia who is to say the world took a backward step? Who is to say that the final outcome will not be at a higher level of consciousness for all concerned? We are still playing this drama and the last characters have not yet come onto stage.

In this publication a modern language rendition of the Oera Linda Book is given in serif typeface, with new place name spellings whenever it is more readable and wherever they are known. The author summarizes and comments on the story recorded in the Book after relating the generally believed version if known. Following this is the actual translation and how it may change our own concepts of history except where the information is totally new. If a reader has an interest in continuing the controversy or validating any feature, he or she is invited to study the original.