I’ve argued long and loud that the polytheistic gods were not supernatural deities but flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials. I’m not the only person who has come to this conclusion – there’s an entire set of ‘ancient astronaut’ buffs who also have argued equally long and loud that the mythologies of the gods are really the history of extraterrestrials that have influenced humanity over the millennia. Rather than cover generalities yet again, I’ll focus on probably the best known of the polytheistic gods – Zeus, IMHO the extraterrestrial (though one could just about pick any of the thousands of polytheistic deities and perform a similar analysis).
Zeus vs. God: The Greek god Zeus (Jupiter in the Roman pantheon of gods) was a King-of-Kings deity, top of the totem pole, but unlike the monotheistic God…
Zeus was born and had a precarious start in life and childhood. His daddy wasn’t a very friendly father figure. In fact the father of Zeus, the Titan god Cronus (the product of Gaia and Uranus who was later done a mischief by Cronus) really sucked big-time. Cronus swallowed all of his new born kids in order that they, in the future, wouldn’t become rivals and a pain in the ass by challenging his rule. Fortunately, Zeus’s mother, Rhea, came to the rescue and tricked Cronus into swallowing a substitute stone instead of Zeus. Baby Zeus was secluded away to Crete and raised independently by nymphs, coming back eventually to get daddy to vomit up his siblings, and they collectively gave Cronus his just deserts in the war of the Titans vs. the Olympians.
So Zeus, unlike God, had to work and fight his way to the top job.
Zeus lived on Earth – Mount Olympus. Mount Olympus at least is a really real place one can sink one’s teeth into, unlike the nebulous Godly abode of Heaven.
Zeus also shared power, in the main with his brothers Poseidon and Hades, but also including various Olympic goddesses – the opposite sex. God does not share power; certainly not with females.
There are statues of Zeus commissioned while he was still Greek’s all powerful chief cook and bottle washer, so we know today what Zeus looked like (and our imaginations and representations of God’s images are usually molded on images of Zeus).
Zeus and Sex: Zeus is probably more famous for his sexual exploits than anything else!
Unlike God, Zeus ‘married’, two or even three times. Firstly there was the Titaness goddess Metis, who produced Zeus’s daughter Athena via a very unusual mating process. Zeus apparently swallowed his pregnant wife and she gave birth to Athena in Zeus’s head which had to be split open to release the kid; well actually Athena was ‘born’ fully grown and armed (and presumably clothed as well). Now I put to you that no human in even the wildest drug induced state would conjure up such a fantasy. Instead, this is a misinterpretation of some sort of high-tech alien process little understood by the ancient Greek historians. See below for further analysis.
Secondly, Zeus ‘married’ Themis, yet another Titaness goddess. That union produced the Fates, Dike, and Eirene. Lastly, Zeus ‘married’ Hera – the Queen of Olympus and his sister to boot – from which more offspring came, like Ares. But was Zeus a faithful hubby? Not on your Nellie; not a snowball’s chance in Hades!
Zeus had sexual desires that just wouldn’t quit. God never lusted after Mother Mary or Eve I bet! Anyway, Zeus, via mortal women (and usually via trickery if not outright force), fathered a who’s who in Greek mythological demigods and demigoddesses – the hybrids that result from the mating of gods/goddesses with mortals. There was Helen of Troy; Heracles (Hercules); Perseus; Castor, Polydeuces, Minos and the Muses for starters. The randy old bugger even mated with another of his own sisters, Demeter producing Persephone (who later had a randy run-in with Zeus’s brother, Hades).
Speaking of Minos (son of Zeus and his rape victim Europa) and hybrids, there’s another example of weird unions; births and resulting offspring that’s suggestive of high-tech. Now it seems Minos pissed off Zeus’s brother Poseidon. Poseidon, ever inventive, caused Mrs. Minos (Pasiphae) to lust after a bull (and presumably the bull to lust after Mrs. Minos). The end product of this union became that human-bovine hybrid, the Minotaur (and that’s no bull!).
As an aside, in case you think Zeus is the sexual exception when it comes to lusting after us mortals and not the sexual rule in mythology, think again. Greek/Roman mythology is full of X-rated amorous tales for the over-18 only. You just have to think of Eros/Cupid and Aphrodite/Venus. The latter also mated with a mortal male producing some of the next generation (lucky guy). Now Aphrodite, like Athena, had a rather odd ‘birth’. She was also ‘born’ thanks to some weird biology between seawater foam and those severed private parts of Zeus’s grandfather, Uranus (see below for more graphic details).
This is just the tip of the iceberg in the ‘who begat who’ and under what circumstances, and that god-mortal relationship isn’t confined to the Greek (and Roman) pantheon.
God gets into the act in the sense that the Old Testament references those “Sons of God” getting it on with the “Daughters of Men”.
Then there are American Indian tales such as the one from the Algonquin tribe that relates the story of the mortal Algon and the Sky-Girl he fell in love with. There are those from South America (Peru) where you have the mortal Ollantay and the love of his life, Cusicollur, a direct descendent from the Inca Sun-God Viracocha. Also Peruvian, involving a son or incarnation of Viracocha, name of Coniraya, who had it off with Cavillaca, a high-ranking but nevertheless mortal Inca who got pregnant in one of those rather unusual mythological ways – in this case by eating sperm-laden fruit (a case of artificial insemination perhaps?). Then you have the demigod Sigurd (Siegfried) who shacks up with his aunt Brynhildr (Brunnhilde), originally a goddess, a shield-maiden or Valkyrie in Norse mythology, but who was transformed into a mortal before Sigurd met her. These and more mirror the general theme of amorous god-mortal relationships in Greek mythology.
Now there has to be an explanation apart from the obvious one (it’s all fiction) how either supernatural beings and/or aliens can mate with humans. I dismiss the possibility of there being any really real supernatural deities, so that leaves ET as the other option. Now mythologies around the globe record that the ‘gods’ created human beings. The only way that could have been done is by their using incredibly advanced biotechnology, bio-engineering and other genetic manipulation techniques.
Part of that creation process was making sure humans were sexually and genetically compatible with their creators. Why they (deities or aliens) would desire that is for the moment unanswerable. At the least it suggests that various life forms in the cosmos can’t be all that dissimilar at a biochemical level, and might imply that a terrestrial-extraterrestrial connection extends farther back and is deeper than one could on probability expect.
But back to alien-human genetic technology than enables our sexual and reproductive compatibility, the parallel is, moral and ethical considerations aside, this is genetic technology we ourselves might be capable of in the not all that distant future. In theory, even if a form of rather perverted theory, we could manipulate our genetics, and the genetics of another terrestrial species, to create a human-animal hybrid. In fact this has already been accomplished with less complex life forms. The term ‘Frankenfish’ comes to mind in context, though ‘GloFish’ is more correct. It was the transfer of the gene from a jellyfish into a zebrafish so that the fish became fluorescent. Though not created for the purpose, they can be obtained in the aquarium/pet trade. If GloFish today, translated into our near future, might it really be possible if one really wanted to, to create a really real mermaid? Yes!
The Evidence for Zeus the Extraterrestrial: Why was this Zeus character an alien?
Well Zeus possessed and frequently used high technology not available to his Greek subjects. That high technology revolved around those famous and fearsome thunderbolts that Zeus liked to chuck around. Zeus and his mates using such high technology (supplied by the way via a trio of Cyclopes – and if they ain’t alien looking I don’t know what is) defeated the Titans (the Titanomachy) thus achieving power after a decade long battle (one of those ‘star wars’ in the heavens). Then Zeus had to use his thunderbolts battling against the mother of all monsters, the Typhon. Zeus suffered grievous injuries but he prevailed, those thunderbolts flashing every which way.
Another form of high-tech was suggested above and refers back to those alien-human demigods and demigoddess hybrids, human-animal hybrids, and those wired ‘births’ like that of Athena and Aphrodite.
More high-tech could be suggested in that Zeus had the ability to shape-shift, or at least had the technology that allowed him the illusion of shape-shifting. It was through such trickery that he was able to have his wicked way with some of those mortal female humans that produced some of those demigods and demigoddesses.
Zeus was ‘immortal’, yet vulnerable, as the battle with Typhon proved. In theory, Zeus (unlike God), could be bumped off. Very long-lived extraterrestrials might be considered by us mortals to be, for all practical purposes, immortal.
Zeus of course was a sky god in Geek mythology. He came from the sky; he was of the sky.
Zeus rode around in an aerial chariot (what we might call today a UFO).
A Hard Act to Swallow:
I noted above the ‘birth’ of Athena which gave Zeus a bit of a headache (to say the least)! Recall that Zeus swallowed Metis, his pregnant wife, who gave birth to a fully grown, clothed and armed Athena while in that swallowed condition!
But even before that Cronus swallowed his offspring, but was tricked into swallowing a rock instead of baby Zeus. Later on down the track Cronus was forced to cough up the other five of the siblings of Zeus.
But before even that, and somewhat akin, Uranus stuffed his brats, one of which was Cronus, back into the womb of his beloved mother and sexual partner, Gaia. That didn’t work for long, Gaia finally bursting at the proverbial seams. Gaia then had her revenge getting Cronus to slice off the private parts of Uranus – ouch!
So what do we make of all this swallowing and stuffing? On the surface it was the mechanism for daddy to make sure his offspring wouldn’t survive or be able to be around to ever challenge his power base. While the rational might be true, the biological act can’t be.
So what might the swallowing or the stuffing actually represent? Well, if you get into a vehicle; car, bus, train, plane, submarine, Apollo space capsule, etc. you have, to someone ignorant of the vehicle concept, that vehicle swallowing you. Did Jonah get swallowed by a whale? – Of course not. Jonah entered into some sort of mechanical device. In the same way, Zeus forced Metis into some sort of contraption where she eventually gave birth to and raised her daughter, Athena. Cronus forced his offspring into some sort of contraption, all later to be freed, but Zeus escaped that fate entirely while being raised on Crete. Uranus stuffed his brats into some sort of device, probably along with Gaia, but they escaped and Gaia got her revenge for their imprisonment.
The reverse procedure by the way, vomiting, is a commonplace theme in creation mythologies around the world.
Where Did Zeus Go? I can not find a satisfactory explanation in classical mythology texts as to what happened to the ancient Greek sky-god.
Unfortunately, the story of Zeus (and the other Greek/Roman pantheon of deities) just stops mid-sentence. There’s no happy ever ending, ending or even a happy never ending, ending. There’s no ending at all, full stop! If the gods are mythical, why no last chapter in their saga? It must have been very frustrating to the ancient Greeks not to get the next and ultimately final installment in “The Amazing Adventures of Zeus, the Sky God”.
If Zeus and his comrades were real, but terrestrial, then it would have been difficult, but probably not impossible, for them to become incognito; disguised for the rest of their ‘immortal’ days, changing jobs and appearances and nationalities every few decades or so.
But if Captain Zeus of the Starship Olympus and crew decided to pack up and leave and boldly go elsewhere in the cosmos to seek out another primitive civilization to rule over, they being under no obligation to inform and seek permission from the terrestrial authorities first, then it’s understandable why their story stops in mid-verse and why we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the lot of them in over 2000 years!
One Final Thought: By my reckoning as related above at least demigods and demigoddesses like Gilgamesh, Brahma, and Shiva as non-Greek examples, and Achilles, Helen of Troy, Heracles, and [King] Minos [of Crete] were really human-alien hybrids. Since many of them in turn mated with mortals and produced offspring, and they in turn ditto, right on down the timeline, that means that most of us have probably a tiny percentage of our genetic makeup that is ultimately extraterrestrial in origin.
