By Thomas R. Horn
The Dragon, Watchers, and the Occult Connection
As thoroughly studied in the best-selling book, On the Path of the Immortals (Defender Publishing, 2015), biblical literalism depicts Leviathan as a real reptilian entity, a highly intelligent, immortal, divine creation in chaotic rebellion. When the underworld portal is opened, this sea serpent will briefly visit untold horror on the earth, only to face judgment when facing “the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64).
The Behemoth depicted by Job 40:15–24 (10–19) is also best understood as a preternatural creature possessing supernatural characteristics.[i]While connections to other ancient Near-Eastern dragons have been suggested, Behemoth seems to be a distinct entity paired with Leviathan. This dragon might very well manifest from the earth when the portal to the Abyss is opened (Revelation 9:1). However, you might be surprised to learn that not all flying serpents in Scripture are fallen:
Although many Christians probably recoil at the thought that God created serpentine divine beings, as we demonstrated in chapter 1 (“What Is This All About?”), Scripture does support the notion. It is also telling how the Watchers were described in explicitly reptilian terms[ii] by the ancient Hebrews, lending support to the idea that fallen ones may have matched the depiction of human sacrifice-demanding “fiery serpents” whose characteristics are partly human in appearance. With a proper understanding of the biblical Seraphim and Watchers, the Mesoamerican connection no longer seems so fanciful. The plumed serpent gods of the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans share the same basic description as the biblical flying serpentine humanoids.
Early Mesoamericans who worshiped the feathered serpent included the Olmec, Mixtec, Zapotec, Toltec, and Aztec. As early as Olmec times (1400 B.C.), the feathered or plumed serpent is depicted throughout North, Middle, and South America. For example, the late Olmec or Toltec culture known as Teotihuacan prominently displayed the serpentine god on the sides of the pyramid located at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.
The archaeological record shows that after the fall of Teotihuacan, the cult of the serpent spread to Xochicalco, Cacaxtla, and Cholula—the New World’s largest pyramid dedicated to Quetzalcoatl.[iii]
The Incas of Peru, the Aztecs of Mexico, and the Mayas of Yucatan all worshipped similar winged serpent gods. The Inca referred to these rebel Seraphim as Amaru; the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl; and the Maya as Kukulkán. In Inca mythology, the amaru is a huge, double-headed, flying serpent that dwells underground.[iv] As a supernatural entity, the reptilian was believed to navigate portals between the netherworld of the dead to the natural world of the living.[v] While many have connected descriptions of Quetzalcoatl as a bearded man with similar descriptions of Viracocha, the latter is not represented as a winged, serpentine-human hybrid. However, in remarkable accord with Quetzalcoatl, the title Amaru Tupa was an honorific title denoting royalty.[vi] In fact, the Incan creator god Viracocha adopted “a stone image of an amaru”[vii] as his huauque, the “man-made double”[viii] representing the living king during his lifetime.
Quetzalcoatl is the Aztec name for the feathered-serpent deity and is one of the main gods of Mexico and northern Central America. In the Aztec civilization of central Mexico, the worship of Quetzalcoatl was ubiquitous. He was the flying reptile deity who reportedly said, “If ever my subjects were to see me, they would run away!”[ix] His winged reptilian adversary, Tezcatlipoca, was generally considered more powerful, as the god of night, sorcery, and destiny. During the twenty-day month of Toxcatl, a young man dressed up as Tezcatlipoca would be sacrificed.[x] Lesser known is that, like the Watcher angels in Genesis 6, Aztec tradition holds that their plumed serpent gods also created giants who were later destroyed in a worldwide flood:
According to Aztec myth, during the first age, or Sun, the gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca created a race of giants from ashes, giving them acorns for nourishment. But the giants so enraged the gods due to their wickedness that the gods decided to end the giants’ existence and sent the jaguars to destroy them. Only seven survived the onslaught of the savage beasts. Later, when the gods summoned forth the waters to flood the Earth and destroy the first race of humans, these seven giants, the Xelhua, climbed the mountains to seek refuge from the thrashing waters that were enveloping the planet. Five of the giants survived the torrent, and in the end they built the great tower of Cholula to commemorate their survival of the flood.[xi]
The Incans similarly believed that Viracocha’s first creation was a race of wicked giants that he destroyed in a deluge.[xii] While it is usually held that all of the Nephilim were drowned in the Flood, there are similar Jewish traditions of one giant’s survival, King Og of Bashan.[xiii] A tradition of his survival is preserved in the Talmud.[xiv] Whether one accepts this ancient rabbinic tradition or not, the obvious parallel to the Aztec account entailing a few surviving giants demands an explanation. We suggest both traditions reflect actual historical events. Even so, such high strangeness is not so summarily relegated to the past.
The Maya hold that Kukulkan, represented as a feathered serpent, came from heaven to earth. Accordingly, the quetzal bird representing heaven was chosen as his totem, and the serpent represents earth. Winged serpent iconography features prominently at Chichén Itzá, El Tajín, and throughout the Maya region. As discussed in the chapter 3, the Mayan cosmology has led to significant theological error in the New Age movement and was the impetus for most of the failed 2012 ascension predictions. The cumulative case that these plumed serpent deities are real immortal entities, fallen “fiery flying serpents,” or former seraphim, explains all of the mythological data in terms consistent with biblical theology.
The heinous practice of human sacrifice by the Aztecs,[xv] Mayans,[xvi] and Incans[xvii] is well enough attested to be uncontroversial. Some indigenous scholars defend the old ways on the grounds that, according to their cosmology, the gods did the same for the people. Some stories suggest vampirism, a practice associated with the fallen ones and their Nephilim progenies.[xviii] For example, in a creation myth found in the Florentine Codex, Quetzalcoatl offers his blood to give life to humanity. There are several other myths in which Mesoamerican gods offer their blood.[xix] What distinguishes this from the blood of Jesus in Christian theology is that it was a one-time offering by a willing participant who subsequently rose from the dead. In contrast, the Mesoamericans offered even their own flesh-and-blood children in various forms of ritualistic human sacrifice—a brutal idolatry that was good news to nobody. Identifying these bloodthirsty serpents as fallen “sons of God,” who defiantly court worship from humans and encourage various forms of extravagant ethical deviance, seems morally warranted from the original source documents of Mesoamerican religions.[xx]
It is nearly self-explanatory as to how such concepts of flying serpents could have extended from Mesoamerica to Native American tribes and apocalyptic beliefs. For instance, the “Cherokee Rattlesnake Prophecies” were written down by members of the Cherokee tribe during 1811–1812. These prophecies are similar to Mesoamerican apocalyptic belief and share the idea that sometime following the year 2012, a flying plumed serpent with human-hybrid features would return during a time of when the earth and heavens are shaken.
From my book Zenith 2016, a portion of the Rattlesnake Prophecy reads:
[Following] the year…2012 an alignment will take place both on the Cherokee calendar and in the heavens of the Rattlesnake Constellation.… It is the time of the double headed serpent stick. It is the time of the red of Orion and Jupiter against the white blue of Pleiades and Venus…the Cherokee Rattlesnake Constellation will take on a different configuration. The snake itself will remain, however; upon the Rattlesnake shall be added upon its head feathers, its eyes will open and glow, wings spring forth as a winged rattlesnake. It shall have hands and arms and in its hands shall be a bowl. The bowl will hold blood. Upon its tail of seven rattles shall be the glowing and movement of Pleiades. The Rattlesnake shall become a feathered rattlesnake or feathered serpent of Time/Untime.
While the Mayans and Cherokee were awaiting the return of their serpent deity, uninvited preternatural visitations were ongoing and still are. According to Chulin Pop, a contemporary Mayan, preternatural giants are still visiting the Watchers’ sins on the native peoples in the jungle. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, a professor at Montana State University, recorded his testimony:
They [seven-to-eight-foot giants] come from the stars in their big silver plates and they stay here sometimes only for a night; sometimes for a week or more. They take the women and make them have their babies. They have four fingers and no thumbs. Any man who tries to defend his women is sick for days. They have great powers. They make you hear words, but they never speak. They have weapons that make rocks and things disappear.[xxi]
The transparent parallels between the ancient “sons of God,” who sinned “as Sodom and Gomorrah” by “giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh” (Jude 7), worldwide reports of alien abduction, and this contemporary Mayan’s account, suggests a complex interrelated phenomenon. As with the cultural rebellion against biblical morality, modern-day testimony reminiscent of the Watchers’ lustful deviance imply the days of Noah and Lord’s return are upon us (Matthew 24:37; Luke 16:26). Stephen Quayle suggested that Americans consider this little poem, “Quetzalcotal, are evil leaders in this land waiting for you to claim America again as Amaruca, the Land of the Serpent?”[xxii]
This title—Amaruca—is, according to some people, the title from which “America” is taken. It is related to Mesoamerican history, serpent-worship, and giants, and according to Freemasonry, connects the founding of the United States and its Capitol designers with “wisdom” derived from the fallen flying seraph. Also from my book Zenith 2016:
The story begins long before the Spaniards arrived on this continent and was chronicled in the hieroglyphic characters (and repeated in oral history) of the sacred, indigenous Maya narrative called the Popol Vuh. Sometime between 1701 and 1703, a Dominican priest named Father Francisco Ximénez transcribed and translated the Mayan work into Spanish. Later his text was taken from Guatemala to Europe by Abbott Brasseur de Bourbough where it was translated into French. Today the Popol Vuh rests in Chicago’s Newberry Library, but what makes the script interesting is its creation narrative, history, and cosmology, especially as it relates to the worship of the great “feathered serpent” creator deity known as Q’uq’umatz; a god considered by scholars to be roughly equivalent to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and the Yucatec Mayan Kukulkan. According to Freemasons like Manly P. Hall, no other ancient work sets forth so completely the initiatory rituals of the great school of philosophic mystery, which was so central to America’s Baconian dream of the New Atlantis, than the Popol Vuh. What’s more, Hall says, it is in this region where we find the true origin of America’s name and destiny.
In The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly Hall writes:
This volume [Popol Vuh] alone is sufficient to establish incontestably the philosophical excellence of the red race.
“The Red ‘Children of the Sun,’” writes James Morgan Pryse, “do not worship the One God. For them that One God is absolutely impersonal, and all the Forces emanated from that One God are personal. This is the exact reverse of the popular western conception of a personal God and impersonal working forces in nature. Decide for yourself which of these beliefs is the more philosophical [Hall says sarcastically]. These Children of the Sun adore the Plumèd Serpent, who is the messenger of the Sun. He was the God Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, Gucumatz in Quiché; and in Peru he was called Amaru. From the latter name comes our word America. Amaruca is, literally translated, ‘Land of the Plumèd Serpent.’ The priests of this [flying dragon], from their chief centre in the Cordilleras, once ruled both Americas. All the Red men who have remained true to the ancient religion are still under their sway. One of their strong centres was in Guatemala, and of their Order was the author of the book called Popol Vuh. In the Quiché tongue Gucumatz is the exact equivalent of Quetzalcoatl in the Nahuatl language; quetzal, the bird of Paradise; coatl, serpent—‘the Serpent veiled in plumes of the paradise-bird’!”
The Popol Vuh was discovered by Father Ximinez in the seventeenth century. It was translated into French by Brasseur de Bourbourg and published in 1861. The only complete English translation is that by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, which ran through the early files of The Word magazine and which is used as the basis of this article. A portion of the Popol Vuh was translated into English, with extremely valuable commentaries, by James Morgan Pryse, but unfortunately his translation was never completed. The second book of the Popol Vuh is largely devoted to the initiatory rituals of the Quiché nation. These ceremonials are of first importance to students of Masonic symbolism and mystical philosophy, since they establish beyond doubt the existence of ancient and divinely instituted Mystery schools on the American Continent.[xxiii]
Thus from Hall we learn that Freemasons like him believe “ancient and divinely instituted” mystery religion important to students of Masonry came to Amaruca/America—the Land of the Plumèd Serpent—from knowledge that the Red Man received from the dragon himself. What Hall conceals is that, even to this day, in the secret societies, Lucifer is considered this benevolent serpent-god who has nothing more than the best intentions for man, while Jehovah is an evil entity who tries to keep mankind in the dark and punishes him if he seeks the truest wisdom. Since these ancient serpent legends include the Mesoamerican feathered serpent gods and can be looked upon as a historical testament of that Angel thrown down by God, “then perhaps The Land of the Plumèd Serpent may also be known as the Land of Lucifer,” concludes Ken Hudnall in The Occult Connection II: The Hidden Race.[xxiv]
Credit to Tom Horn
